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Women in the Third Reich: Hitler's Forgotten Following
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12600 |
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BOOK WORLD
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6 / 1987 |
3,386 Words |
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Lucy Mazareski
Lucy Mazareski reviews frequently for Catholic publications. |
MOTHERS IN THE FATHERLAND
Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics
Claudia Koonz
New York: St. Martin's Press
556 pp., $25.00
"After the publication of fifty thousand books and monographs about Hitler's Germany, it seems scarcely conceivable that any facet of those nightmare years remains unexplored, much less undiscovered. But in fact, half of the Germans who made dictatorship, war and genocide possible have largely escaped observation. The women among Hitler's supporters have fallen through the historian's sieve, unclaimed by feminists and unnoticed by men." Thus begins the introduction to the long-missing half of Nazi social history.
It is not difficult to understand how the women of the Third Reich escaped historians' scrutiny. The Nazi state was the dream-come-true of one man, the fuehrer, a bizarre modern caricature of the patriarch, and the hallmarks of his regime - brown-shirted violence, Gestapo terror, and SS-organized genocide - were the exclusive province of males. Wholly excluded from political posts and decision-making, German women of the period are commonly portrayed as the passive, often helpless, spectators and victims of their marching, warring men. Yet millions of women not only cheered Hitler's rise to power, but actively worked for the success of his party and its political, social, and racial programs, enthusiastically administering educational and indoctrination programs, Nazi welfare services, leisure activities, and consumer organizations. Most importantly, they brought Nazism home to the grassroots of everyday
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