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Well, many have said that women are far more fanatic than men. And witnessing the actions of especially Red and Green women politicians, so true. -
They should meet my mother-in-law.Comment
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can t help but think this may well be sensationalist rubbish !Comment
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What is the problem with it ? Is it worth reading or not ?? TomComment
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I have seen this book lying in the bookstore and it looked very promising, couldn't view the table of contents though as it was wrapped in plastic. I was seriously considering buying it, has anyone read it?Comment
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I just wonder what the proposed demographic for this type of book is. I have read books of similar ilk and their lack of objectivity basically eliminates their historical value, or even value as a psychological insight.
Judging by the comments on the link above, this is something I'd expect to see in the dollar bin at bargain book centres before long.Comment
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I managed to pick up a copy of this cheaply (thankfully) This is really just an effort to point fingers at German woman for their perceived responsibility for the murders of the jews ! Apart from a handful of evil bitches mentioned (which can never be seen as representing German womanhood as a whole) the idea that Teachers , nurses and secretarys were guilty of involvement in the "holocaust" is ridiculous , sure they copied letters orders that moved trains etc , or treated wounded ss men but that was their job !,Also if some made comments at the time that we find repulsive now ! so what ? times and thought were different for them , so why try to make it almost an admission of guilt ? One crap book masquerading under a cloak of real important historical research
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I haven't read this book but I have to say that is pretty much exactly what I would have expected this book to be !Originally posted by Terry OToole View PostI managed to pick up a copy of this cheaply (thankfully) This is really just an effort to point fingers at German woman for their perceived responsibility for the murders of the jews ! Apart from a handful of evil bitches mentioned (which can never be seen as representing German womanhood as a whole) the idea that Teachers , nurses and secretarys were guilty of involvement in the "holocaust" is ridiculous , sure they copied letters orders that moved trains etc , or treated wounded ss men but that was their job !,Also if some made comments at the time that we find repulsive now ! so what ? times and thought were different for them , so why try to make it almost an admission of guilt ? One crap book masquerading under a cloak of real important historical research
There is a review here :
http://www.theguardian.com/books/201...y-lower-review
At this point, there are problems. It isn't just that Lower dwells too much on the horrors; other questions arise. How representative are these women – six of whom turn out to be "perpetrators"? Lower largely ignores professional killers – women in positions of real power in the Reich Security Main Office or the SS – and concentrates on amateurs, whose killing was dictated by simple opportunity, individual character, proximity to power and violent settings, and a wish to emulate their male partners. So why should we want to read about them? Because, Lower argues, they collectively show that the role of women in the Holocaust has been underplayed; obscured by their later stereotypes as heroic "rubble women" clearing up the mess of Germany's past, victims of marauding Red Army rapists, or flirtatious dolls who entertained American GIs.
Lower oversells her material. There is vivid new detail here, but the broad outlines of this story have been around for a while. The role of women under the Nazis has been churned over for the past 30 years; nobody accepts that stuff about Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church) any more. That women, as well as men, can abuse their fellow human beings, is hardly the novelty she claims.Last edited by Mil-Archive; 11-20-2013, 01:51 PM.Comment
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Originally posted by Terry OToole View PostI managed to pick up a copy of this cheaply (thankfully) This is really just an effort to point fingers at German woman for their perceived responsibility for the murders of the jews ! Apart from a handful of evil bitches mentioned (which can never be seen as representing German womanhood as a whole) the idea that Teachers , nurses and secretarys were guilty of involvement in the "holocaust" is ridiculous , sure they copied letters orders that moved trains etc , or treated wounded ss men but that was their job !,Also if some made comments at the time that we find repulsive now ! so what ? times and thought were different for them , so why try to make it almost an admission of guilt ? One crap book masquerading under a cloak of real important historical research
I knew it .. another hollywoodish work
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In a recent interview with the NYT's Lower is asked:
Q. Did you focus on a few women because it was difficult to get specifics about many more than that, or just to keep the size of the cast from overwhelming readers?
A.
I selected these 13 women because they best represent the diverse ambitions and convictions of the nurses, secretaries and spouses who circulated in the eastern territories. Many more women appear in the corroborating examples and in the endnotes. I would have liked to develop fuller, intimate biographies of more women, but lack of documentation prevented that, and yes, too many women in the main narrative would have overwhelmed readers.
Q.
As an academic, did you feel an urge to make this book as accessible to general readers as possible, and how conscious of that were you while writing?
A.
While writing the book, my editor and I made certain decisions about how to present the material to a general audience -- for example, I ended up cutting about 100 pages of historiographical analysis, extended footnotes and examples from the original manuscript, and inserted a list of main characters to help readers remember the basic profiles of the 13 featured women.
Wendy Lower places dollar signs ahead of giving an important subject it's due and should put back the 100 pages she left out! Why not discuss the ethnic German cook from Lida who tended to the needs of the killing squads (pg 211 notes)and other women she mentions in her end notes as well as examples of German women in the East from past authors books on the subject. Had she done that she would have has a solid 400 page book- but that may intimidate readers and add up to less $$$. The guts of the book are Chapter 2-5- about 100 pages.
If you go through the book and try to corroborate what she writes you will find some of what she writes has no listed sources I gave up at page 76 where there are no footnotes for that page as well as page 7. And what about that figure of 500,000? On the back of the book Christopher R. Browning states in the blurb a number of 1.5 million. Through out the book she says several hundred thousand, hundreds of thousands, at least a half a million. The author states that you have to look in the end notes in order to discover how she arrived at that figure. Good luck. But why not have it front and center in the book with charts and graphs.
Subtract the index, notes, acknowledgments, epilogue, intro. chapters 1,6 ,7 and pictures -the meat of book is about 100 pages. And why is that? In Lower's own words pg 201 " Specifics about who perpetrated the violence in the ghettos and mass shooting sites across the Nazi-occupied East are most often simply lacking. The Germans concealed or destroyed this information, and witnesses and survivors could seldom identify their their persecutors by name. Even when there were eyewitnesses, often the suspects could not be tracked down after the war, and victim testimony alone was not strong enough evidence to mount a case, especially in the case of female suspects... Given the facts that in places like the Ukraine less than two percent of the local Jewish population survived the war..."
So in 1992 Wendy travels to Kiev and found a list of German kindergarten teachers and she embarked on her journey after that. And what did she find? Unfortunately not much.
You can skip the epilogue. As well as chapter 7. What Happened to Them? since it can be summed up in one sentence on pg 197- "What happened to them? The short answer is that most got away". More accurately virtually all of the women got away. There goes 22 pages! Next you can skip chapter 6. Why Did They Kill? Lower seems to have no clue. Lets see. Why would a woman take a baby and grab it by it's feet and smash it's head against a wall, invite children over with candy and shot them in their mouths instead of giving them candy, or invite children escapees into her home feed them and then take them outside and shot them in the back of the head one at a time? The simple answer is that they are psychopaths. And the other explanation can be found in James Waller's book "Becoming Evil: How ordinary people commit Genocide and mass killings". If you convince people that those other people are subhuman and undeserving of life people feel free to commit these crimes since the victims are no longer viewed as humans. There goes another 22 pages.Comment
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