Recommended Reading on Women in the Third Reich

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » 24 Mar 2006 09:56

This sticky is the place to post recommendations on good books dealing with the role played by and the situation of women in the Third Reich.

/Marcus

If you buy through the below links you not only get the books you want but you also support the forum while shopping!
* AHF Bookstore
* Amazon.com (UK, Germany)

Matt Gibbs · Post by **Matt Gibbs** » 24 Mar 2006 11:31

Several books I aquired second hand recently were worth a read:

Oslo Intrigue by Helen Astrup - long out of print but dealing with the views of a woman in the occupied Norway.

Nazi Women by Cate Haste - still reading

Women and the Nazi East - excellent researched book about the role of women in the colonisation policies of the Eastern Occipied territories, the aryanisation programmes, the relations with the BDM and the Landjahr with the whole process, very interesting read.

Best wishes

Matt Gibbs

Matt Gibbs · Post by **Matt Gibbs** » 24 Mar 2006 11:34

Hello - again!
The post just arrived with a copy of Zivilabzeichen der Wehrmacht 1934-45 by Klaus Patzwall and is an interesting little reference work about the civil badges for mil. staff, there are quite a few photos of badges in wear by women and although in German is a useful and reasonable price. [mine came from Helmut Weitze].

Best wishes
Matt Gibbs

ancasta · Post by **ancasta** » 24 Mar 2006 15:05

This one is available from German Amazon and EBay. Currently in German language only:

ancasta · Post by **ancasta** » 24 Mar 2006 15:05

Double posting - deleted.

Vikki · Post by **Vikki** » 24 Mar 2006 17:15

On women in the Wehrmacht: Franz W. Seidler's Blitzmädchen: Die Geschichte der Helferinnen
der deutschen Wehrmacht.

Also, any of the sections on women in John Angolia's Uniforms and Traditions series.

Vikki · Post by **Vikki** » 25 Mar 2006 05:39

A few of my favorites on civilian German women:

Claudia Koonz, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics.
Koonz' book is mainly an examination of the effects of policies of the period on women and the family. But her information on women's roles within the NSDAP and the rise of women's organizations like the Frauenschaft is one of the reasons I refer to the book frequently. (Her interview with Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, the Reichsfrauenführerin, is also interesting.)

And a couple of compilations of personal accounts:

Colin and Eileen Townsend, War Wives. This book alternates accounts of the war by German and British women.

Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich.

Annelie · Post by **Annelie** » 20 Apr 2006 21:13

I would feel bad if I hadn't mentioned one of my favorites which I have read several times.

Frauen...German Women Recall the Third Reich.\ ..........author Alsion Owings.

Flinker · Post by **Flinker** » 27 Apr 2006 07:31

And, of course, the very best autobiography by a woman ever written: "Memiors," by Leni Riefenstahl. She was certainly not an ordinary Third Reich woman, but through her story, one can see the possibilities open to women during that time, which I believe were not so in the US. It makes a fine contrast.

It is further interesting to note that Soviet women were in there contributing to their country's efforts during peace and war in just about every field, too. The female snipers with scoped Mosin Nagent rifles were particularly deadly.

Dieter Zinke · Post by **Dieter Zinke** » 13 May 2006 11:11

Outstanding book:
Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag GmbH, Berlin, 1992
ISBN 3-442-12849-8

D. Zinke

Marcus · Post by **Marcus** » 13 May 2006 21:10

A repost of a previously removed post by Flinker was removed.

As I mentioned in the first post in this thread, this is for posting recommendations on good books dealing with the role played by and the situation of women in the Third Reich, not anything else.

/Marcus

scowen · Post by **scowen** » 22 May 2006 16:59

The Nazi Organisation of Women by Jill Stephenson, ISBN 0-389-20113-8

In depth study of the varoius womens groups associated with the NSDAP from the early 1920's to 1945.

Cheers
Don

Samuel Mitcham · Post by **Samuel Mitcham** » 21 Jun 2006 02:17

Three excellent books:

Marie Vassiltchikov, The Berlin Diaries, 1940-1945. Published in 1985 and 1987. One of the best books I've ever read. By a working woman and Russian aristocrat who dated a Luftwaffe fighter ace and knew several of the 20 July conspirators. She also cooked eggs on an iron and stole toilet paper. One of the few books I've read in which you get the feeling that the author knew more than she told. She was also very good looking.

Sybil Bannister, I Lived Under Hitler. English woman who married a German doctor who left her about the time the war began. She nevertheless never attempted to leave Germany and was accepted as a German. Very interesting stories of daily life. She lived in what is now Poland but got out on the last train before the Russians arrived.

Cinzia Romani, Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich. Also very interesting.

Vikki · Post by **Vikki** » 23 Jun 2006 02:38

I completely agree with your recommendation of Missie Vassiltchikov's book!

In the same vein are Ruth Andreas-Friedrich's memoirs: Berlin Underground: 1938-45 and Battleground Berlin: Diaries, 1945-48. She was a journalist and member of a local Resistance group, and her observations on wartime and postwar Berlin are fascinating.

~FV

Sewer King · Post by **Sewer King** » 30 Sep 2006 14:13

Hans Peter Bleuel's Sex and Society in Nazi Germany is fairly widely-available (New York: J.B. Lippencott, 1973), translated from the German by J. Maxwell Brownjohn and originally published as Das Saubere Reich (Berne und München: Schere Verlag, 1972).

This book is more about both official and personal ideals and practices of sexuality as a whole in the Third Reich period, although its chapter headings frame them under the lives of the regime's leading figures.

A readable and general book that probably turns up in many bibliographies. But it might be considered part of the 1960-70s wave of scholarship about Nazi Germany, along with contemporary books like Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Speer's Inside the Third Reich: a Memoir, and Waite's The Psychopathic God. As such I suppose Bleuel's book had been built on and maybe surpassed by later authors. But like the above titles, it is still easily available as a good basic source.

Axis History Forum

Recommended Reading on Women in the Third Reich

Recommended Reading on Women in the Third Reich

Post arrived this morning - a book!