Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, NY’ ISBN 978-0-547-86338-2©2012, $26, p. 270, including index
By Fred Reiss, Ed.D.
WINCHESTER, California — That Hitler and the Nazi Party succeeded in killing more than twelve million “undesirables,” including six million Jews, hinges as much on the technology available at that time as it does to willing German participants.
Racism and Antisemitism were built into the ideology of the Nazi Party and over a decade, in the 1930s, transferred to every corner of German life. Children born in the early 1920s reached maturity just in time to be indoctrinated with Nazi philosophy about race and German superiority and in many cases shaped into carrying out mass murders and implementing “The Final Solution,” which the Germans called, “aktions against the Jews.”
Wendy Lower, Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College and author of Hitler’s Furies discovered, while searching World War II files in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, documents that held the names of German women who were actively working in “the east,” eager party members who provided support for the troops as they dislodged and murdered the native populations to make way for Germany’s need for space.
Few of these woman were every brought to justice because “the prosecutors were more interested in the heinous crimes of their male colleagues and husbands than in those of the women. Many of the women remained callous and cavalier in the recounting of what they had seen and experienced.”
In Hitler’s Furies, Lower follows the lives of thirteen women, representative of the hundreds of thousands of women who actively participated in Germany’s “Crimes Against Humanity.” Lower focuses on the transformation of these impressionable girls into Nazi-loving women, who came from varying backgrounds: rich and poor, educated and not, city dwellers and provincials.
All had participated in some fashion in a Nazi youth and/or training program. None had displayed violent tendencies. They came to the east—to Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus—as schoolteachers, nurses, secretaries, typists, and wives accompanying their SS husbands in search of adventure and advancement. In the war zones, many of them became “zealous administrators, robbers, tormentors, and murderers.”
Lower places these women into three classifications. First, “Witnesses” who encounter some aspects of the wanton murder of the civilian population, particularly the atrocities being committed against the Jews. Many claim that they did not understand what they saw—mass removals of civilians and a disappearing population, for example.
Second are the “Accomplices” who typed up the orders and took dictations “facilitating the robbery, deportation, and mass murder of the Jews.” Others, with authority to sign on behalf of the commissar, placed the official seal on documents, deciding, in essence, who would be killed and who might live.
Finally, there are the “Perpetrators,” those women who personally shot and killed innocent victims; some performing this monstrous task as part of an official “aktion,” others simply for sport.
Lower tells a compelling history of a little discussed side of the Nazi Party’s implementation plan to conquer the world in order to make it safe for Germans. Hitler’s Furies offers proof that neither the advances of our Modern Age, nor the millennia of teachings of western religions, are barriers to the depth of evil to which humanity can sink. Lower concludes by telling us what happened to each of these thirteen women: excuses, denials, acquittals, and the ability to lead a fruitful life without fear of retribution.
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Dr. Fred Reiss is a retired public and Hebrew school teacher and administrator. He is the author of The Standard Guide to the Jewish and Civil Calendars; Ancient Secrets of Creation: Sepher Yetzira, the Book that Started Kabbalah, Revealed; and a fiction book, Reclaiming the Messiah. The author can be reached via fred.reiss@sdjewishworld.com