WOMEN OF THE THIRD REICH

Sub-titled 'From Camp Guards to Combatants', the book explores the activities of young women who participated in the running of the most evil regime the world has yet known. The women of the Third Reich were a vital part in a complex and vilified system including the Luftwaffe, but how did it evolve in the way it did? From those whose fingers issued typewritten dictates from above to those who operated telephones, radar systems, and fought fires as their cities burned around them, those who drove concentration camp inmates like cattle to their deaths, those who fired anti-aircraft guns at Allied aircraft, and ultimately, those who joined the militias when faced with the impending destruction of what would have been a one thousand year Reich. Many historians have asked the question 'Why?' and the book provides an intriguing, sometimes humorous, but often dark, brutal and shocking narrative into the murky hell of human consciousness. Each testimony is unique, and each person a victim of circumstance entwined with the thorns of an ideological obligation. In an interview with Traudl Junge, Hitler's private secretary, she remembers: 'There was so much hatred within it's hard to understand how the state functioned... I am convinced all this infighting and competition from the males in Hitler's circle was highly detrimental to its downfall.' By 1939, membership of the Hitler Youth for both boys and girls was unavoidable, and all were expected to join their respective organisation where they excelled in the political ideology, sports, fitness and all the basic practical assets which were rewarded handsomely with certificates and badges. Ther are some harrowing photographs such as the carbonised remains of a woman and child collected up in a bathtub by BDM girls in Berlin and pretty blonde BDM girls doing sports and the infamous Salon Kitty. 254pp.