Wendy Lowers stunning account of the role of German women on the World War II Nazi eastern front powerfully revises history, proving that we have ignored the reality of womens participation in the Holocaust, including as brutal killers. The long-held picture of German women holding down the home front during the war, as loyal wives and cheerleaders for the Führer, pales in comparison to Lowers incisive case for the massive complicity, and worse, of the 500,000 young German women she places, for the first time, directly in the killing fields of the expanding Reich.
Hitlers Furies builds a fascinating and convincing picture of a morally lost generation of young women, born into a defeated, tumultuous postWorld War I Germany, and then swept up in the nationalistic fervor of the Nazi movementa twisted political awakening that turned to genocide. These young womennurses, teachers, secretaries, wives, and mistressessaw the emerging Nazi empire as a kind of wild east of career and matrimonial opportunity, and yet could not have imagined what they would witness and do there. Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival and field work on the Holocaust, access to post-Soviet documents, and interviews with German witnesses, presents overwhelming evidence that these women were more than desk murderers or comforters of murderous German men: that they went on shopping sprees for Jewish-owned goods and also brutalized Jews in the ghettos of Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus; that they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also taking their turn at the mass shooting. And Lower uncovers the stories, perhaps most horrific, of SS wives with children of their own, whose female brutality is as chilling as any in history.
Hitlers Furies will challenge our deepest beliefs: genocide is womens business too, and the evidence can be hidden for seventy years.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From the Author
WENDY LOWER is the John K. Roth Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and a research associate at the Ludwig Maximillian University in Munich. A historical consultant for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, she has published numerous articles and books on the Holocaust and conducted research in central and eastern Europe since 1992. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. About the Author
Wendy Lower is the John K. Roth Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and research associate of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. A historical consultant for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, she has conducted archival research and field work on the Holocaust for twenty years. She lives with her family in Los Angeles and Munich.
Suzanne Toren has recorded over nine hundred audiobooks. She has performed on Broadway and in regional theaters in works penned by Shakespeare, Moliere, and Arthur Miller. She has also appeared on Law & Order and in various soap operas. She was awarded the Narrator of the Year Award for her audiobook recordings for the Library of Congress and has earned more than two dozen Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine.
--This text refers to the mp3_cd edition. From the Back Cover
“Compelling . . . Lower brings to the forefront an unexplored aspect of the Holocaust.” —Washington Post
In a surprising account that powerfully revises history, Wendy Lower uncovers the role of German women on the Nazi eastern front—not only as plunderers and direct witnesses, but as actual killers. Lower, drawing on twenty years of archival research and fieldwork, presents startling evidence that these women were more than “desk murderers” or comforters of murderous German men: they went on “shopping sprees” and romantic outings to the Jewish ghettos; they were present at killing-field picnics, not only providing refreshment but also shooting Jews. And Lower uncovers the stories of SS wives with children of their own whose brutality is as chilling as any in history.
Hitler’s Furies challenges our deepest beliefs: women can be as brutal as men, and the evidence can be hidden for seventy years.
“Disquieting . . . Earlier books about the Holocaust have offered up poster girls of brutality and atrocity . . . [Lower’s] insight is to track more mundane lives, and to argue for a vastly wider complicity.” —New York Times
“An unsettling but significant contribution to our understanding of how nationalism, and specifically conceptions of loyalty, are normalized, reinforced, and regulated.” —Los Angeles Review of Books
WENDY LOWER is the John K. Roth Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and a research associate at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. A historical consultant for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, she has published numerous articles and books on the Holocaust and conducted research in central and eastern Europe since 1992.
Author photograph © Björn Marquart
MARINER
www.marinerbooks.com
$14.95
ISBN 978-0-544-33449-6
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
National Book Award Finalist
National Jewish Book Award Finalist
"Disquieting . . . Ms. Lower’s book is partly the study of a youthquake . . . Earlier books about the Holocaust have offered up poster girls of brutality and atrocity . . .[Lower’s] insight is to track more mundane lives, and to argue for a vastly wider complicity."
—New York Times
"Intriguing and chilling . . . feminism run amok."
—Chicago Tribune
"Compelling. . . By focusing on the role of ordinary women — rather than the already notorious female concentration camp guards — Lower brings to the forefront an unexplored aspect of the Holocaust. . . Lower’s careful research proves that the capacity for indifferent cruelty is not reserved for men — it exists in all of us."
—Washington Post
"A virtuosic feat of scholarship."
—Kirkus Reviews
"Well-researched . . . As gripping and eye-opening as it is chilling."
—People
"Often harrowing and even disturbing... [Hitler's Furies] shines a stark light on the ordinary women who accompanied the “ordinary men” of Christopher Browning’s landmark study."
—New Statesman (UK)
"Lower sheds some much-needed light on an aspect of WWII history that has remained in the shadows for decades . . . Surprising and deeply unsettling, the book is a welcome addition to the literature on the Holocaust.”—Booklist
“Hitlers Furies will be experienced and remembered as a turning point in both women’s studies and Holocaust studies.”—Timothy Snyder, author of Bloodlands
“Hitler's Furies is the first book to follow the biographical trajectories of individual women whose youthful exuberance, loyalty to the Führer, ambition, and racism took them to the deadliest sites in German-occupied Europe. Drawing on immensely rich source material, Lower integrates women perpetrators and accomplices into the social history of the Third Reich, and illuminates them indelibly as a part of post-war East and West German memory that has been, until this book, unmined.”—Claudia Koonz, author of Mothers in the Fatherland
“Hitler’s Furies is a long overdue and superb addition to the history of the Holocaust. The role of women perpetrators during the Final Solution has been too much glossed over. Lower’s book provides an important and stunning corrective. It is a significant addition to our understanding of the role of ordinary Germans in the Reich’s genocide.”—Deborah Lipstadt, author of Eichmann on Trial
“Lower shifts away from the narrow focus on the few thousand female concentration camp guards who have been at the center of previous studies of female culpability in Nazi crimes and identifies the cluster of professions—nurses, social workers, teachers, office workers—that in addition to family connections brought nearly one-half million women to the German East and into close proximity with pervasive Nazi atrocities. Through the lives of carefully-researched individuals, she captures a spectrum of career trajectories and behavior. This is a book that artfully combines the study of gender with the illumination of individual experience.”—Christopher R. Browning, author of Ordinary Men
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Book Description
HMH hardcover, 2013, previous ISBN 978-0-547-86338-2
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
###
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. 
