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by Tim Heath.
Softcover (6.2×9.2 inches). 182 pages. 2025 reprint of 2020 book.
Subtitle: German Women on the Home Front
This collection of diary and journal entries, supplemented with interviews, comes mostly from late teenagers and young women. Most girls joined the Young Women’s Organization (Jungmadelbund) when they turned 14 and later joined another bund when older. As such, they were indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda from an impressionable age.
As with the Hitler Youth, these girls were required to serve nine months as a laborer. One extensive entry talks about being sent to a farm in Poland. Many entries, including those of young married women in their 20s, discussed flirting, sex, and promiscuity. As the war turned against Germany and shortages appeared, Nazi officials increasingly demanded sex in exchange for food and other favors.
According to these entries, the German consumer economy was just fine up through Christmas of 1942. No shortages. No rationing. Plenty of Reichmarks. As 1943 stretched on and especially through 1944, the economy increasingly turned from consumer to military production. Many of the women joined the labor force in factories. Bombing turned them increasingly homeless, food became scarce, and deaths increased, but morale held.
Very little concerns the Holocaust, but then again, they are teenagers and young women.
The book contains 27 black and white photos and one black and white illustration.
This is well edited and light read through diaries, offering a partial view of the war from the German home front.
Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
