Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany

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.