18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, Disturbing, Informative, February 27, 2005
This review is from: Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (Paperback)
"Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics," is a scholary work, but I read it quickly, as if it were a popular page-turner. I asked myself why I was reading it so quickly.
I read this book so quickly, I think, because it fascinated me, of course, but also because it disturbed me and, given how informative the book is, I kept expecting that I'd turn the page and find THE EXPLANATION that would make it all make sense to me, and give me peace of mind.
The "it" I wanted explained, of course, was the absolute evil of Nazism. The Nazism in this book is not -- for the most part -- the public Nazism of "Trimuph of the Will" or the notorious Nazism of Auschwitz.
It's the Nazism of cookie bakers and apron wearers. It's the Nazism of women breast feeding their children and dreaming of a Judenrein Germany; their hearts aflutter at thoughts of their fuhrer.
Koonz has amassed a trove of data, including personal letters, memoirs, and newsclips, that one is unlikely to encounter in other volumes.
Inevitably, her book emerges as a social history of Nazism, the Nazism of the hearth, as it were, rather than the headlines.
As alien as Nazism is, the reader cannot help but draw parallels to the present moment.
Social reformers who oppose any birth control, and who have deep convictions about woman's place being in the home, having as many babies as possible, and quietly and unobtrusively devoting themselves to making life easier for their husbands and sons who serve the state, are not exclusively a thing of the past.
This book, in passages, made my skin crawl. It certainly made me think. It did make me cry. It is a worthy addition to the scholarship on the Nazi era, and an invitation to deep thought about misogynist ideologues' control over women's lives.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must Read for Modern German History Majors!, December 17, 1999
This review is from: Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (Paperback)
I was led to reading this book for a paper I did on the civil rights of women and reasons behind women's support of the state during Hitler's reign. Professor Koonz did a superb job of bring several elements together to form a large, descriptive view of the lives of all women, Christian, Jewish, Nazi, Socialist, etc. I found the interview done with Frau Scholtz-Klink, former head of the women's department under the Nazis, one of the most fascinating, especially since she has held on to her Nazism when other Germans such as Hemult Kohl have renounced and apologized for their role in Nazi Germany. For the first time in all my studies of Germany, I finally began to understand not only who, what and when but also how and why the German Weimar Republic of the 1920's could accept a dictator such as Hitler.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Interesting and well written discussion, May 22, 2002
This review is from: Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics (Paperback)
In her book Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics historian Claudia Koonz tackles an interesting aspect of Nazi Germany and women's history. Koonz's topic is one that has been relatively unexplored, despite the vast abundance of historical writing and discussion on Nazi Germany since WWII. I enjoyed the book for the most part, and found her ideas and explanations for the many contradictions and issues women found in Nazi Germany to be satisfactory and enlightening. Using many previously unearthed documents and sources, Koonz attempts to explain how women survived and adapted during such a misogynist and time.
I found Koonz's writing to be both in-depth and comprehensive, but rarely boring or cumbersome. I think she did an excellent job of keeping the reader informed of her thought progression, and at times I felt that I was along with her looking for sources or trying to figure out an explanation to a problem. I liked her analysis of the Weimar republic and "New Woman" and how those factors influenced many women's decisions and opinions on submitting to Nazi dominance. I also found her chapter on Jewish women very enlightening and yet frustrating. Reading about how hopeless it seemed to the women when their children brought home Nazi propaganda from class provides a good example of the cruelty (and stupidity) of the Nazis. I do feel that Koonz tended to get bogged down in her examples of particular Nazi women. Although they were necessary, I feel that they ran long-winded at times. Overall, Mothers in the Fatherland is a very interesting and insightful analysis of this dark period of women's history.
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