Nazi Wives: The Women at the Top of Hitler's Germany by James Wyllie

Hello my lovely readers! All the books I've read this month have been nonfiction. This book elicited strong emotions from me. Let's get into it!

SYNOPSIS
Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann―names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margaret, Lina, Ilse and Gerda...

These are the women behind the infamous men―complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself. Until now, they have been treated as minor characters, their significance ignored, as if they were unaware of their husbands' murderous acts, despite the evidence that was all around the stolen art on their walls, the slave labor in their homes, and the produce grown in concentration camps on their tables.

James Wyllie's Nazi Wives explores these women in detail for the first time, skillfully interweaving their stories through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction into the post-war twilight of denial and delusion.

"Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself": The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945 by Florian Huber

Hello my lovely readers!

If you can't tell...I'm in my death and dying era. Let's get into it.

SYNOPSIS

By the end of April 1945 in Germany, the Third Reich had fallen and invasion was inevitable. As the Russian army advanced, horrifying stories spread about the depravity of Red Army soldiers. For many German people, there seemed to be nothing left but shame, guilt, and fear. For tens of thousands of them, the only option was to choose death for themselves, and for their children. Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself recounts this little known mass event.
Using diaries, letters, and memoirs, historian and film-maker Florian Huber traces the euphoria of many ordinary Germans as Hitler restored national pride; their indifference as the Führer's political enemies, Jews, and other minorities began to suffer; and the descent into despair as the war took its terrible toll, especially after the invasion of the Soviet Union. Above all, he investigates how suicide became a contagious epidemic as the country collapsed.
Drawing on eyewitness accounts and other primary sources, Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself presents a riveting portrait of a nation in crisis, and sheds light on a dramatic yet largely unknown episode of postwar Germany.