Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family and Nazi Politics

by Claudia Koonz

Book Overview

National Book Award Nominee American Library Association Notable Book An Outstanding Book in Women's History at the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians From the collapse of the Kaiser's regime to the destruction of Hitler in his bunker, Germany has been studied, explicated, and psychoanalyzed time and again. Yet there have been few detailed investigations into the historical and cultural roles played by German women in modern times. This important...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312022565
• ISBN13: 9780312022563
• Release Date: September 1988
• Publisher: Griffin
• Length: 8 Pages
• Weight: 1.86 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating, Disturbing, Informative

"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.

nice

This is a very good pioneering study of the women's sphere of Germany during the Hitler years. I especially enjoyed the portions on Sholtz-Klink, the Nazi women's leader. And I was especially facinated by Mutter Diehl's idea of a Women's Chamber of Syndicates. This is a good pioneering study of this topic. Further studies are needed.

wonderful

I have just finished taking a semester long course with Claudia Koonz at Duke University, and have been inspired to read more about the cultural aspects of Nazi Germany. I was impressed that she truly is as good a writer as she is professor. I highly recommend the book and highly recommend coming to Duke to take a class with her!!

Must Read for Modern German History Majors!

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.

An eye opener to the mystery of women's role in Nazi Germany

Out of personal interest (family members were executed by Nazi military--they weren't Jewish but they were poor--i.e. undesirables) I wanted to read this book. It is the history that American(I grew up there)kids should be taught. It is real life men and women from pre-Nazi to post-Nazi Germany, their fears motives, politics and secrets. The fascist empire that was Nazi Germany could well happen in the US yet. This book should be taken very seriously before we forget what happened.