Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
| Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower | |
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| Category: History | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: An erudite look at an oft-underexplored side of Nazi history, but not given to us with the best of views. | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 288 | Date: October 2014 |
| Publisher: Vintage | |
| ISBN: | |
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If one were to describe the Nazi regime with one's own adjectives, I'm sure that sooner or later, after all the ruder and more pejorative emotional ones had been thought of, 'masculine' would come up. Let's face it, it would be a scholar who could name any leading female Nazis beyond Eva Braun and Mrs Goebbels, who nobody I think has ever put at the forefront of actual policy, thinking or actions. But there were females at the front – many thousands, it seems, taking themselves away from Germany with ideas of the Lebensraum being opened up out East; moving their skills as either secretary, nurse, teacher or just willing Hausfrau to the occupied territories, where… well, that would be telling. This book is the one to read if you want that told, but it doesn't do it in the most brilliant way.
I read it seeing two major problems that got in the way while I was reading it, and continued to do so, long after I began trying to piece my opinions together. They're the opinions, facts and events the book are trying to convey – the reason for it – as well as the reason the book is the way it is now. It struck me a little odd that the book needed to be written at all on some early pages, itemising as it does the female role in such things – why would we ever doubt the female proportion of Nazi participants anyway? But the book is at least effective in saying that we did and that redressing that is vital. Of course many of the typists, nurses and other people present were female, and of course when you think about it some of them must have done heinous things. They may not have fallen for Nazism in the same bullish, vengeful, masculine manners that men did, but they did – and at least some of those secretaries happily printed out lists of people to be deported, at least some of those nurses engaged with giving lethal injections for reasons of euthanasia and Nazism's anti-Semitic social engineering.
From that you can tell there are galling details about the events of the time in these pages – how could there not be. Women, even ones who later testified to being pregnant and therefore the epitome of feminine Nazi ideals, were bashing Jewish babies' heads against walls, shooting Jews alongside their husbands, and more. But again my problems with the book met with the style the author uses. The first chapter was so wishy-washy it hardly informed me at all, beyond a slight vindication of the book's existence. The second seemed too quick to say 'someone said this', 'someone did that', and yet to fail to meet the historian's need (beyond the hugely extensive notes at the back) to say who and where. Only after that do we meet some case studies, who are hard to latch on to and keep separate as far as the later stages of the book, where the big questions get rhetorically asked too early on, meaning the end again drifts away from the immediacy I sought.
So the book falls between two stools – I could always read and understand every page, and for the student there are the notes that make the book a whole fifth longer again on their own. But it didn't read either as academic as perhaps some would wish, nor as easily and forcefully as I wanted or expected from the copious blurbs that use their own powerful, stunning and evocative adjectives about the book. And with that looseness I identified at the beginning when the obvious yet unseen facts of womanhood in 1930s Germany and beyond were roughly sketched for us, I did see some people losing interest. The fact remains that this book gives a welcome recap of Nazi history in galling detail, as usual, and covers the whole gamut of its subject from what made a German woman in that time, to how they didn't get the justice due them after the war, again due to their gender. But by my rules that mean I seek a non-fiction book that tells an ideal story in an ideal way with the voice of the perfect writer, this book failed. It informed, but it lacked something – something perhaps I dare to call masculine.
I must thank the publisher for my review copy.
Hitler's Last Witness: The Memoirs of Hitler's Bodyguard by Rochus Misch takes us adeptly through Nazi times from the point of view of the Fuhrer's lackey. Magda by Meike Ziervogel fictionalises Mrs Goebbels but still manages to show how some women thought and acted under Nazi flags. You might also appreciate Hitler at Home by Despina Stratigakos.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower at Amazon.com.
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