Recommended Reading on Women in the Third Reich

[monikqe]

I recommend also "Sexalität unter dem Hakenreuz Manipulation und Vernichtung der Intimsphäre im NS-Staat" written by Stefan Maiwald and Gern Mischler.

This book deals with the sexuality in the Third Reich. One chapter ("Family") shows the nazi family (during peace and war time). The chapter "Front" was very interesting for me, you can find history of the thousands of women who were raped (not only by the Red Army).

Best regards

[uhu]

http://cgi.ebay.com/b287-c1943-Luftwaff ... dZViewItem

[JägerMarty]

The only women specific title i have is "frauen" by Alison Owings. It's a great paperback and is recorded interviews with women from all over Germany and of the 3rd reich experiences. Great reading!

[Thomasine]

I recommend Anna Maria Sigmunds Die Frauen der Nazis. It is originally written in German but has been translated into several languages, among other English, French and Swedish.

[Thomasine]

Two other books I forgot to mention in my first post are High-class life under Nazism by Fabrice D'Almeida and Eva Braun by Angela Lampart.

Very interesting both of them.

[idgreenwood]

Marcus will surely proscribe the following if I have transgressed - I posted it a moment ago on the recommended reading for the 'Life in the Third Reich' section. This may however be a better home for it.

For an ordinary woman's experiences, Mathilde Wolff-Monckeberg's On the Other Side (my copy is Pan 1979), which I believe is being republished shortly in the UK, has parallels with currently popular home front war diaries published in Britain.

Better known is Christabel Bielenberg, The Past Is Myself, (my copy Corgi 1984), a far more dramatic memoir of the Irish lady married to a German lawyer with connections to Operation Valkyrie. A while ago it was made into a UK television mini-series with (startlingly) Liz Hurley as Christabel. Bielenberg is a very good writer and hers is a remarkable story.

Equally dramatic, the anonymous A Woman in Berlin (Virago 2006) tells in diary form the experience of the fall of Berlin, April to June 1945. To be read in conjunction, I think, with Beevor.

My apologies if any of these have been noted earlier on this (or any other!) thread.

[Ripli]

Wow! Nice list!

Leni Riefenstahl was very amazing! She is one of my heroes.

Here's a book I saw: " The Camp Women. Female Auxiliaries..." author is Daniel Patrick Brown. I am pretty sure this was the title. If you look it up, it should show the right name. I found this when I looked up Dachau in the Wikipedia. There is a section solely on female Nazis.


I'm sorry I don't have better info. Ach!

[Sewer King]

A book I just read recently, though it starts April 20, 1945 to June 22, 1945. A Woman in Berlin, eight weeks in the conquered city, by Anonymous. I knew it was tough, but this book really put it into perspective and didn't sugar coat it.

A similarly harrowing book aside from its title:

• Inga Chesney's A Time of Rape (Prentice-Hall, 1972).

I read it almost 32 years ago, and although not as graphic as the Anonymous book (which I think is often quoted in other mentions of falling Berlin), it has more of a sense of deliverance that would have not have provoked a reaction like that of the other book.

======================

Hanna Reitsch, Flying Is My Life
An autobiography of an aviarix and glider pilot of Hitler's Luftwaffe,Hanna Reitsch.

Is this a variant title of Reitsch's The Sky My Kingdom (Greenhill Military Paperbacks; 1997 reprint of original 1955 edition from Bodley Head)? The reprint has a later afterword from the author before she died in 1979.

-- Alan

[DeniseG53]

I recently finished both Frauen and A Woman in Berlin and thoroughly enjoyed both of them.

I would also recommend "On Hitler's Mountain" by Irmgard Hunt detailing her childhood under the Third Reich when she grew up in Berchtesgaden.

Here is her book's website: http://www.onhitlersmountain.com/welcome.html

[Aidan Weisz]

I second the motion on Women and the Nazi East by Elizabeth Harvey. It's very engaging and one would uncover how difficult life had been for the women in the 1930s.

[uhu]

He Was my Chief

Don't miss this fascinating book. Fills in a lot of interesting questions, and even gave me a few laughs here and there. Being Hitler's secretary for the last twelve years of the Third Reich gives Schroeder an insight to the minutest details.

http://www.amazon.com/HE-WAS-MY-CHIEF-S ... 847&sr=1-1

[bob7708]

Here's another great website about the Nazi's women.

http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthr ... WWII/page2

At the lower part of this page is a copy of the interrogation of Paula Hitler by the OSS.

http://www.ww2incolor.com/forum/showthr ... WWII/page3

[Smananas]

I would like to thank everyone who recommended Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich. I am reading this book now and I love it. I only wish it was longer!

[bob7708]

"Helmuth wrote:
A book I just read recently, though it starts April 20, 1945 to June 22, 1945. A Woman in Berlin, eight weeks in the conquered city, by Anonymous. I knew it was tough, but this book really put it into perspective and didn't sugar coat it.'


'A Woman in Berlin, eight weeks in the conquered city."

Just bought it at Amazon.com at this web address.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss? ... &x=10&y=15

[Svetlana Karlin]

I would like to thank everyone who recommended Alison Owings, Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich. I am reading this book now and I love it. I only wish it was longer!

Hi Smananas,

Here is one more book of personal accounts by German women:
"Surviving the Fire. Mother Courage & World War II", edited by Lilo Klug.

This book was published as a part of the "Women for Peace" group effort in Heilbronn, West Germany. In 1975 Americans started building a base for the installation of Pershing missiles near Heilbronn. The worried citizens eventually protested against the missiles, when in 1985 a Pershing II missile caught fire, killing three soldiers and wounding sixteen others. The Heilbronn City Council declared the missiles to be undesirable. Lilo Klug, chairperson of the Peace Embassy in Heilbronn and a former Nazi supporter during the war, put together this book of war memories of the local women as a part of the anti-missile protest.