Review: Hitler's Furies
Posted by Kate on Monday, October 21, 2013. Filed under: history, non-fiction, published in 2013, review, reviewed in 2013, ww2 history
Hitler's Furies by Wendy Lower
Published by: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Our source: ARC from the publisher
What it’s about (from Goodreads):
Hitler’s Furies builds a fascinating and convincing picture of a morally “lost generation” of young women, born into a defeated, tumultuous post–World War I Germany, and then swept up in the nationalistic fervor of the Nazi movement—a twisted political awakening that turned to genocide. These young women—nurses, teachers, secretaries, wives, and mistresses—saw the emerging Nazi empire as a kind of “wild east” of career and matrimonial opportunity, and yet could not have imagined what they would witness and do there.
Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival and field work on the Holocaust, access to post-Soviet documents, and interviews with German witnesses, presents overwhelming evidence that these women were more than “desk murderers” or comforters of murderous German men: that they went on “shopping sprees” for Jewish-owned goods and also brutalized Jews in the ghettos of Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus; that they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also taking their turn at the mass shooting. And Lower uncovers the stories, perhaps most horrific, of SS wives with children of their own, whose female brutality is as chilling as any in history.
Our thoughts:
This book both fascinated and horrified me. The woman discussed in the book were almost all young, just finding their place in the world. That's where me and most of my friends are in life so I couldn't help but putting myself into the story. What would I have done?
It was really interesting to see what these women did, what was culturally acceptable for them to do, and what ultimately happened to them. For me, one of the most haunting parts of the book was that Lower included pictures of a lot of the women. It had an incredibly humanizing effect, which was an interesting juxtaposition to their actions.
This was really well researched and presented. It's a very accessible history, even for someone who isn't a big history reader.
We would recommend this to:
Fans of WWII history and women's history
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