'Hitler's Furies' by Wendy Lower retells the story of women under the Nazis, and how they were involved in mass murder. Women's involvement in genocide has often been overlooked during this period, and this book aims to shed light on the brutality of women under the Nazi regime. The book is divided into different professions, from female secretaries to female SS guards, each section revealing something new about women under the Third Reich. The profession which interested me the most was female nurses, which I looked at for my undergraduate History dissertation. I attempted to solve the question as to why doctors, the saviours of life, were involved in criminal murder. Women and female nurses weren't considered 'true' criminals, as they often placed blame on the hierarchy - they were to follow orders of their superior male doctors. Whilst this may have been the case for some nurses, this book reveals the dark horrors of Nazi medicine. Most nurses saw their behaviour in the Nazi euthanasia programme, the 'mercy killings', as an act of kindness, saving the innocent victims from themselves. The novel begins to show the deep secrets of the nursing world, as well as other professions during the Third Reich, and their willingness to murder.
Yet this book is not all darkness and horror. Lower also includes women who questioned the Nazi system and attempted to save the doomed victims. Yet, as we the readers already know, these efforts were often done in vain. This an important book to read, although a difficult one, in order to try to understand the complexity of the Holocaust and 'ordinary' people's involvement in genocide. This is a great book to read if you're a beginner to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, or simply if you want to expand your knowledge on the past.
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