Introduction

During the 20th Century, the role of women changed from homemaker to factory worker and beyond. We all know how the women of the Allied soldiers embraced the role of fabrication, and ‘holding the fort’ while the men were fighting the Germans, but have we ever considered the perspective from the German women who supported their men in the Second World War? This book gives an insight into this aspect of the German women’s role during this time.

The following is taken from the Pen and Sword website:
The women of the Third Reich were a vital part in a complex and vilified system. What was their role within its administration, the concentration camps, and the Luftwaffe and militia units and how did it evolve in the way it did?

We hear from women who issued typewritten dictates from above through to those who operated telephones, radar systems, fought fires as the cities burned around them, drove concentration camp inmates to their deaths like cattle, fired Anti-Aircraft guns at Allied aircraft and entered the militias when faced with the impending destruction of what should have been a one thousand-year Reich.

Every testimony is unique, each person a victim of circumstance entwined within the thorns of an ideological obligation. In an interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler’s private secretary, she remembers: ‘There was so much hatred within it’s hard to understand how the state functioned…I am convinced all this infighting and competition from the males in Hitler’s circle was highly detrimental to its downfall’.

Women of the Third Reich provides an intriguing, humorous, brutal, shocking and unrelenting narrative journey into the half lights of the hell of human consciousness – sometimes at its worst.

Review

This hard backed book is written by Tim Heath, and contains 250 pages of good quality paper with a glossy black and white photographic section in the middle. Published by Pen and Sword and priced at £25 (which may be available cheaper from the Pen and Sword website), this publication contains testimony from those who took up the call and helped their men defend their country, from the enemy - which is this case was the Allied forces.

The list of contents are as follows:
Introduction
Chapter 1 Dismembering Innocence
Chapter 2 Administrating Evil
Chapter 3 From the Beggar’s Paw
Chapter 4 The Little Aryan
Chapter 5 My Infatuation
Chapter 6 Salon Kitty
Chapter 7 A French Adventure
Chapter 8 Keeper of Beasts
Chapter 9 The Devil’s Daughter
Chapter 10 When Our City Burned
Chapter 11 Rotes Kreuz
Chapter 12 There be Monsters
Chapter 13 Surviving Our Youth
Chapter 14 Shoot Straight
Chapter 15 Maidens of Iron
Chapter 16 Say Hello to God
Chapter 17 Victory, War is Over
Chapter 18 Erich
Chapter 19 In the Absence of Men
The Future
Afterward
Further Reading
Acknowledgements

When reading this book, there is a sense that the young women of the third Reich were besotted with this charismatic leader and in their eyes he could do no wrong. Some of the young women who shared their stories, tell of not wanting anything or anyone else, one girl even broke up with her boyfriend because she loved Hitler more. Every young healthy German woman, wanted to help the war effort, the same as English women wanted to help their men.

This book also tells of how some young girls and women were exploited by the likes of Bormann and Goebbels who were sexual predators. Men like these did not care for the women they slept with or their own wives and children, all they cared about was that the female population were loyal to the Führer.

Conclusion

This book gives a intriguing, but also shocking insight into the thoughts of those young German women and how they saw their part in Hitler’s thousand year Reich. I found it very interesting that the girls saw Hitler in the same way as the young ladies in the sixties saw the Beatles. But you can see how easy it is to be caught up in the hysteria of the moment, and to what depths people will sink to, to please their leaders. Tim Heath has written a very informative piece, made all the more real because of the testimonies of those who were caught up in one of the most brutal of periods in the 20th Century.