1st Edition
Mothers in the Fatherland Women, the Family and Nazi Politics
From extensive research, including a remarkable interview with the unrepentant chief of Hitler’s Women’s Bureau, this book traces the roles played by women – as followers, victims and resisters – in the rise of Nazism. Originally publishing in 1987, it is an important contribution to the understanding of women’s status, culpability, resistance and victimisation at all levels of German society, and a record of astonishing ironies and paradoxical morality, of compromise and courage, of submission and survival.
Preface 1. Introduction: Love and Order in the Third Reich 2. Weimar Emancipation 3. Nazi Women and their ‘Freedom Movement’ 4. Liberation and Depression 5. ‘Old-timers in the New State 6. The Second Sex in the Third Reich 7. Protestant Women for Fatherland and Fuhrer 8. Catholic Women Between Pope and Fuhrer 9. Courage and Choice: Women Who Said No 10. Jewish Women Between Survival and Death 11. Consequences: Women, Nazis, and Moral Choice. Epilogue
Biography
Claudia Koonz
Reviews from the original edition:
‘A splendidly thorough analysis (thought it often reads like a story) of an element of Nazism which has rarely been properly examined.’ Independent
‘A fascinating and intensely personal new study of women in Nazi Germany...a crucial insight into the role of women in that ruthless anti-feminist regime.’ Guardian
‘The first thorough treatment of women’s collaboration in the madness and evil of Adolf Hitler’s Germany...powerful, reflective and cathartic.’ Chicago Tribune
