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 … 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.
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I’ve read a lot of historical fiction books about WWII since it is my favorite genre. The amount of research invested in the book is admirable. This book was a different take from what I normally read. The author does an amazing job of being fair and unbiased as he presents the lives of the women married to the men who played a part in Hitler’s evil empire. However, the reader will find it hard not to make personal judgments. I continue to be astonished at how they viewed themselves as righteous and without fault. While the title leads you to believe the book is about the wives, it really focuses more on the men. It is still an interesting read.
Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for my advanced review copy. All opinions and thoughts are my own.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.
Recently, I’ve read a few books about women of the Resistance, spies who worked for the Allies. When this book selection came up, my immediate thought was what is it like to be married to a monster? We’ve read all about the infamous leading men in Hitler’s Reich, but what about the wife behind the man. Could they truly not know?
Wyllie focuses on the lives of the top Nazi women, who couldn’t be more different yet still the same. Some of the younger wives were indoctrinated into the Nazi culture at a young age, some began to fall under Hitler’s spell in adulthood and all endured troubled marriages. The book doesn’t provide excuses for their behavior, and Wyllie doesn’t attempt to change anyone’s mind about their guilt or innocence, or try to exonerate these women. And in the end, I still don’t believe for a second that any of them did not know of the horrors for which their husbands were responsible. These were women who had power and wielded it, had access to wealth and sought it and each had an aberrant fantasy of Hitler that was fed by their nearness to him. Never did any of them show any remorse, except for their own treatment after the war ended.
This is an engrossing behind-the-scenes look at women who “existed apart from everybody else, for who the concerns of the real world were an irrelevance.”
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Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany
James Wyllie
St. Martin’s Press, Nov 2020, 320 pages
Provided by Pub via Netgalley
Historical Novel
I love the cover. The way the black and white photos of the women are arranged creates the appearance somewhat of a swastika without actually using one. It encloses the women and makes them complicit just as the men in Hitler’s group were, their husbands. They were just as bad as their husbands in the way they treated the people under their control.
Parts of this read like a novel and great parts of this read like history, so I’m calling it a historical novel, though I don’t think that’s how the author intended it. It appears to be well researched. Mr. Wylie was talking about the senior military wives and the young women socially in Hitler’s circle; well, he certainly went in circles. So much so that at times I wasn’t sure who he was talking about. Ilsa, Magda, Gerda, Hedwig, and the list goes on and on. So many for a man who was said to not feel comfortable around women. Well, Mr. Wylie rounds them all up and shines a light on many things that were never meant to see the light of day. And it wasn’t just the anti-semitism, but the total lack of caring for their fellow man. While others were living like animals, starving, they were demanding and getting French couture and perfumes, make-up and beauty supplies, wines and alcoholic beverages, and all their usual foods. They also had fully staffed houses, chauffeur driver cars, and bodyguards. Of course, their houses were staffed from the work camps and they could treat them any way they wished. When they wore out staff, they simply replaced them from the camp. No questions asked. No one cared. They not only betrayed their fellow man, but they also betrayed each other at times, their husbands. In the end, many of them ate cyanide capsules rather than face punishment. Others went through the process and wanted sympathy because they weren’t allowed to see their husbands while they were in prison. They were a strange group all told. The book was interesting if at times confusing as to who was who. It’s not a group I want to know any more about. Recommended.
Most of the books about the leaders in Nazi Germany are about the men and their wives are rarely mentioned. This is an interesting and well researched look at the wives of some of the top commanders: Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann. How did their wives fit into their murderous actions? Were they totally unaware of the concentration camps and the ovens or where they part of the war machine? How could they be totally unaware with stolen art on their walls, slave labor that helped in their homes and gardens and the furniture made of human skin.
One of the interesting things about these wives is that their lives were not much different after the war started. They still took care of their children, worried over their health and were jealous of the time their husbands spent away from home – often with mistresses. One of their main goals was to be at the top of their social circle – they all wanted to impress and be best friends with Hitler and they believed in him and in his cause. It seemed to me that they all had to be aware, to some degree, what was going on at this time in Germany even if they weren’t directly involved.
If you enjoy reading WWII books, you don’t want to miss this look at what was going on in the homes and marriages of the main leaders of the Final Solution.
As an avid WWII history buff, I looked forward to reading Nazi Wives by James Wylie. He explores what is known about the wives, Himmler, Hess, Goering… and other members of the upper echelon of Hitler’s Nazi Germany, The reader can tell that the book is full of research based on the many notes. I had to read this over a period of several weeks So I could absorb the details in this book. This book could definitely be used for a college class. The trouble with reading an ebook version is that it is extremely difficult to go to the notes. When finished, I discovered an index too. I would definitely advise getting a book format to be able to use the notes and index while reading. There are also pictures and I think it would be much easier to see them in a book. This is something I am going to do. I am ordering a hardback so that I can read it again.
Thank you St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for an ARC. The opinions of this book are my own.
4 stars
Despite years of interest in reading about and studying the nuances of the ins and outs of the Second World War, I have read very little about the wives of those mover’s and shakers in Germany’s Nazi Party. Truthfully I didn’t find that to be odd – thank you James Wyllie for bringing these ladies into the light. I found several things to be notable – in most instances, the ladies were intensely interested in the politics involved in Germany between wars, and were affected more intensely by the depravations Germany suffered as a result of the First World War than were the men. For the women, it was a more personal affront and affected their children and other family members to a much stronger degree than was expressed by the men of the party. For the men, it was politics and what you can make of it, but to the women, it was the future of their children, their families, that were at stake. And for the women, it seemed to be easier to justify or overlook the genocidal aspects of the party line. In their defense, it didn’t start out that intensely skewed into the mores of the party in the 1920s when they were young and impressionable and intensely tired of living in a society in which all things were limited, all interests and needs curtailed by the humiliating reparations demanded of the German population by the Treaty of Versailles.
This book, in focusing on the women, brings to the fore all that the society who reached maturity in the 1920s and 1930s was up against. Most could not remember a time when Germany was at peace, food was plentiful, there was time for entertainment and socializing, and education was available to all who desired it. For them the world during and post-WWII was all that they knew and was unacceptable to almost everyone of that generation. This was an intense and compelling read. Thank you James Wyllie for this fine viewpoint into the past.
I received a free electronic ARC of this novel from NetGalley, James Wyllie, and St. Martin’s Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work. Obviously, a great deal of work and research went into Nazi Wives, bringing to us an overview of cause and effect that was before obscured by the very horror of the history of this war. It doesn’t make the protagonists less evil. Just lets us see into their influencers along the way. You cannot defend yourself against evil if you don’t see it clearly, understand the intentions and expectations of the protagonists.
Publication date November 3, 2020.
I really enjoyed this well researched and well written book about the wives of the top Nazis of the Third Reich. I read a lot of World War II books, both nonfiction and fiction, and I had never really even thought about the wives of these top officers. This book is a very interesting eye-opener about the women who loved their monster husbands.
Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of this very informative book.
Nazi Wives by James Wylie is a fascinating look into the untold histories, lives, and even thought processes of the spouses to some of the most infamous and heinous masterminds and criminals that were a part of the Nazi regime.
Clearly, the author went above and beyond with his research outlying not only how the couples met, but their respective ideologies and how those shaped their interactions. It was most interesting to see how those ideals molded and changed to external factors as well as internal.
Despite it all, I still am unable to conjure up any sympathy for these women, alright maybe for the young children who had no hope. Yes, these women were surrounded by an unimaginable and seismic shift, and yes propaganda filled the air, but each still had the possibility of a mind of their own, and chose to go down the path they chose despite the risks and negative effects. I still am disgusted by their choices, even though I was riveted to learn more about them.
Excellent book.
5/5 stars
Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for this ARC and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.