Selected Product:
| Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich
Paperback
Author: Alison Owings
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Release Date: 1995-03
ISBN-10: 0813522005
ISBN-13: 9780813522005
List Price: $23.95
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
What were the women of Germany doing during the Third Reich? What were they thinking? And what do they have to say a half century later? In Frauen we hear their voices - most for the first time. Alison Owings interviewed and here records the words of twenty-nine German women who were there: Working for the Resistance. Joining the Nazi Party. Outsmarting the Gestapo. Disliking a Jewish neighbor. Hiding a Jewish friend. Witnessing "Kristallnacht". Witnessing the firebombing of Dresden. Shooting at Allied planes. Welcoming Allied troops. Being a prisoner. And being a guard. The women recall their own and others' enthusiasm, doubt, fear, fury, cowardice, guilt, and anguish. Alison Owings, in her pursuit of such memories, was invited into the homes of these women. Because she is neither Jewish nor German, and because she speaks fluent colloquial German, many of the women she interviewed felt comfortable enough with her to unlock the past. What they have to say will surprise Americans, just as it surprised the women themselves. Not since Marcel Ophuls's controversial film The Sorrow and the Pity have we been on such intimate terms with "the enemy". In this case, the story is that of the women, those who did not make policy but who lived with its effects and witnessed its results. What they did and did not do is not just a reflection on them and their country - it also leads us to question what actions we might have taken in their place. The interviews do not allow for easy, smug answers.
Great Cross Section of Histories
| Customer Rating: | | This book may seem to take a similar tack to "We Survived," by Erich Boehm, in that it captures survivors' memories of life during WWII, however, it differs in a few critical ways. Where it differs is that (1) the memories were gathered four decades after the war , (2) the memories were all shared by women and from their unique perspective, and (3) The women interviewed were not all survivors. The interviewees included an interesting cross section of German society during WWII, including political resistors, Jewish survivors and a member of the Kreisau Circle, and swing to the other end of the spectrum to include politically apathetic housewives, members of the Nazi party and even a prison camp guard. My one complaint is that the author, a journalist, lost her objectivity repeatedly when presenting the interviews, but I certainly can't blame her for reacting strongly to women who still tout ingrained Nazi propaganda and are barely able to cloak their feelings of anti-Semitism. This book is a great read. |
Terrific insight into the women of Nazi-era Germany
| Customer Rating: | | This is the book I've been subconsciously looking for all these years when reading about World War II. What were the lives of German women like in Nazi Germany? There is no single answer, of course, as the answers are as varied as women themselves, despite Nazi-enforced conformity. Here are interviews with sympathizers, resisters, communists, apoliticals, rich, poor, middle class, East Germans and West. This book made it clear to me how idealistic youth could be sucked into the Nazi vortex. This is a dense book, and the interviewer does not succeed at being totally objective. However, for those interested in the topic, this is a great book. |
Marvelous writing
| Customer Rating: | | Frauen offers good insight into the lives of German women during the Third Reich. If some questions are left unanswered, it can be attributed to the women interviewed and not to the author, who had done her homework well and asked direct questions. Having lived in postwar Germany and received the same evasive answers, I was able to nod a hearty Ja to her frustrations. The only "fault" I found with the book, and it may not have been a grave one, was that most of the women came from eastern Germany. I longed to hear from more western Germans. All in all, however, this is an excellent book, one that should sound some warnings to present day readers. |
An Important Book Causing Fascination and Soul-Searching
| Customer Rating: | | I agree with just about all the comments of all the other reviewers of this book, both positive and critical. The author interviewed a wide array of German women that lived through the Third Reich and were able to tell about it during the time she interviewed them (mostly the mid-to-late '80s). I am as upset about the treatment of Jews in the Holocaust as anyone, yet I agree with the reviewer who pointed out that the author focused all the passion of her interviews just about exclusively to this topic. I would have very much liked to have seen more about other aspects of lives and decisions made during the Third Reich, such as the people giving up their civil rights so quickly after the Nazis were in power and then so soon after that there was no such thing as free speech and I don't know what it was like in Germany before the Nazis, but there was definitely zero freedom of the press during the Third Reich. One thing I learned that I did not know before was that people would be arrested for even the barest comment that Germany might not win the war (not to mention any criticism of Jewish stores being boycotted). Shoot, a person could be arrested apparently just for showing any outward sign of compassion to Jews or prisoners and informers were everywhere. Anyhow, it is fascinating reading and I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about this era of history. I had not realized some things before I read this book, such as the role of women in Nazi Germany. Women were definitely repressed far beyond what I had realized before. The most frustrating thing for me in reading this book was the poor translations (or poor editing of translations). There were sentences that no matter how many times I read them, they simply did not make any sense to me at all. Also, often words or phrases were left untranslated, and knowing no German myself, this too was frustrating, nicht? I also would have liked to hear less of the personal slant of the author's perspective. All in all, though, I think I would have given this book 5 stars if it has been edited to reasonable readability. Yes, some of the German style of pigeon-English would have been lost, but then again, these women (or most of them) were not speaking English anyhow; they were speaking German, and what they said was translated into English. Why not translated into a more readable English? I believe a lot more people would read and benefit from reading this book had that been the case. I love the diversity of the women interviewed -- not only in social status and roles they played during the Third Reich but also their different ways of coping and different attitudes toward life. Some lived in great fear; others made little room in their hearts or minds for fear, because they were too busy doing what was clear they must do -- whether hiding a Jew or whatever. Very interesting stuff and terribly relevant even today in a world that still has not yet learned how to come to terms with its problems without war and the crimes endemic of war. |
One of the best books I've ever read
| Customer Rating: | | This book is incredible, one I'll re-read several times through the years. I've been living in Germany for the past three years, and will soon return to America. The people here, while VERY friendly, are quite reserved, so it's amazing that Alison Owings was able to get so many women from that era to open up about this sensitive subject. Not only do I applaud Ms. Owings's effort, but I thank the women who shared their lives and thoughts with her. We should never be afraid to look at the past - even the horrors. |
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