Hitler S Housewives

The roles and experiences of women in Nazi Germany, told in their own words for the first time. During Adolf Hitler’s 1932 election campaign, it is believed that over half those who voted for him were women. Germany’s women had witnessed the anarchy of the post-WWI years, and the chaos brought about by the rival political gangs brawling on their streets. When Hitler came to power there was at last a ray of hope that this man of the people would restore not only political stability to Germany but prosperity to its people. As reforms were set in place, Hitler encouraged women to step aside from their jobs and allow men to take their place. As the guardian of the home, the women of Hitler’s Germany were glorified as the very foundation for a future thousand-year Reich. Not every female in Nazi Germany, though, embraced the principle of living in a society where two distinct worlds existed—and with the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany’s women would soon find themselves on the frontline. Ultimately, Hitler’s housewives experienced mixed fortunes throughout the years of the Second World War. Some lost loved ones who went off to war never to return; some lost children to the influence of the Hitler Youth or to the Allied bombing; some sought comfort in the arms of other men; some would serve above and beyond the call of duty on the German home front. Their stories form intimate and intricately woven tales of life, love, joy, fear, and death. Hitler’s Housewives: German Women on the Home Front deepens our understanding of one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies, and the role played by Germany’s women on the home front, which ultimately became blurred within the horrors of total war. This is their story, in their own words, told for the first time.

The meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party cowed the masses into a sense of false utopia. During Hitler’s 1932 election campaign over half those who voted for Hitler were women. Germany’s women had witnessed the anarchy of the post-First World War years, and the chaos brought about by the rival political gangs brawling on their streets. When Hitler came to power there was at last a ray of hope that this man of the people would restore not only political stability to Germany but prosperity to its people. As reforms were set in place, Hitler encouraged women to step aside from their jobs and allow men to take their place. As the guardian of the home, the women of Hitler’s Germany were pinned as the very foundation for a future thousand-year Reich. Not every female in Nazi Germany readily embraced the principle of living in a society where two distinct worlds existed, however with the outbreak of the Second World War, Germany’s women would soon find themselves on the frontline. Ultimately Hitler’s housewives experienced mixed fortunes throughout the years of the Second World War. Those whose loved ones went off to war never to return; those who lost children not only to the influences of the Hitler Youth but the Allied bombing; those who sought comfort in the arms of other young men and those who would serve above and beyond of exemplary on the German home front. Their stories form intimate and intricately woven tales of life, love, joy, fear and death. Hitler’s Housewives: German Women on the Home Front is not only an essential document towards better understanding one of the twentieth century’s greatest tragedies where the women became an inextricable link, but also the role played by Germany’s women on the home front which ultimately became blurred within the horrors of total war. This is their story, in their own words, told for the first time.

Nazi Wives is a fascinating look at the personal lives, psychological profiles, and marriages of the wives of officers in Hitler's inner circle. Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann—names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda... These are the women behind the infamous men—complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself. Until now, they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husbands' murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around them: the stolen art on their walls, the slave labor in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables. James Wyllie's Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skillfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion.

Focusing on women and their work, this valuable historical study traces industrial social work from its inception through the Nazi period. Author Sachse provides an analysis of policies applied to women workers rather than developed by and for them--as an example of how social policy treats women. This thorough book examines the continuities and discontinuities of industrial social work, and assesses the effect on the industrial welfare system of developments within National Socialism. Within this framework the study examines the role of women in industrial social work and labor relations, the attitudes of various groups toward the proper relations between industry and government, and the well-documented relationship between industrialists and the German Labor Front (DAF), the organization that replaced the outlawed labor unions.

As the last flames of the Second World War flickered and died, Germany emerged into an apocalyptic wasteland, where the Hitler Youth generation would be cursed with the running sore of National Socialism. With the uncaged bear of the Soviet Union flexing its muscles and the escalating tensions between East and West providing some distraction from the funeral pyre of the Third Reich, those living in West Germany soon understood that they were the geological bulkhead, a component in the prevention of communism spreading throughout the infantile peace of post-Second World War Europe. Despite all the destruction and political tensions which surrounded them, the young men and women of Germany were keen to experience the world beyond their own precarious borders. In August 1945, Tia Schuster and Lisa Kraus were two fourteen-year-old Berliners, and - like many - they found themselves shoehorned into what was to be the second ‘new era’ of their young lives. The first had brought about only death and destruction, yet this second had a cold unfamiliarity about it. As the late 1940s gave way to the 1950s and ‘60s, a series of new decadent eras - of rock-n-roll, fashion, flower power and sexual revolution - was on the horizon, which posed a threat to the traditional German way of life championed by the Nazi regime and post-Second World War German government. With this heady mixture of newfound freedom, the youth of Germany unwittingly became a feature of everything that both fascism and communism despised. This unique work tells the story of the tentative steps taken by young men and women into the ‘afterlife of Nazi Germany’. Encompassing memoirs along the way, it presents a quirky portrayal of charm, humor, mischief and personal accomplishment along with a vitally important slice of (West) Germany’s social history, which has remained hidden from the literary world for decades. As Tia Schuster remarked: ‘The world suddenly became a very big piece of pie, we wouldn’t be happy with just taking a slice of this pie, no, we wanted the whole damn thing and we didn’t care if it made us sick or not!’

This WWII history chronicles the rise and fall of Nazi Prussia as well as the ill-fated exodus of its civilian refugees in 1945. Seen as an agricultural utopia within Hitler’s Germany, Prussia is thought to have gone untouched during the Second World War. Yet the violence of the National Socialist regime was widespread throughout the German state. As the Red Army advanced on its borders in 1945, nearly ten thousand civilians evacuated the region aboard the MV Wilhelm Gustloff—only to perish when the ship was sunk by a Soviet submarine. It was the worst loss of life in maritime history, six times greater than that of the RMS Titanic. Combining existing material and new findings, this book tells the story of Prussia’s rise and fall as a military power. It chronicles the attempts made by brave civilians and military personnel to overturn the Nazi regime, as well as the desperate evacuation of refugees in one of the greatest exoduses ever seen, told by those who were there.

A history of German women in the Holocaust reveals their roles as plunderers, witnesses, and actual executioners on the Eastern front, describing how nurses, teachers, secretaries, and wives responded to what they believed to be Nazi opportunities only to perform brutal duties.

The “frank, tragic, bittersweet, brutal, emotional” true story of the Third Reich’s so-called she-devils of the League of German Girls (Gerry Van Tonder, author of Berlin Blockade). They were ten to eighteen years old: German girls who volunteered for the war effort, and were indoctrinated into the Nazi youth organizations, Jungmädelbund and Bund Deutcscher Mädel. At first they were schooled in a very narrow education: how to cook, clean, excel at sports, birth babies, and raise them. But when Hitler called, they were trained, militarized, and exploited for the ultimate goal of the Third Reich. From the prosperous beginnings of the League of German Girls in 1933 to the cataclysmic defeat of 1945, Hitler’s Girls is an insightful, disturbing, and revealing exploration of their specific roles: what was expected of them, and how they delivered, as defined by the Nazi state. Were they unwitting pawns or willing accessories to genocide? Historian Tim Heath searches for the answers and provides a definitive voice for this unique, and until now, unheard generation of German females. “An essential account of the women who served Hitler during his years of power. Stunning photographs but a chilling narrative, in view of what they were required to do.” —Books Monthly