Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann – names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich.
The women behind the notorious men – complex individuals with distinct personalities who were seduced by Hitler and whose daily lives were dominated by Nazi ideology. During the rise and fall of Nazism, these women fell in love and lost, raised families, quarreled with husbands and each other, and competed for status with the Führer himself. They are still seen as minor characters, their importance being ignored, as if they were unaware of the acts of murdering their husbands, despite the evidence surrounding them: beaten artwork thieves on the walls, slave labor in their homes, and produce grown in concentration camps on their tables.

Their story through years of struggle, power, decline and destruction in the twilight of post-war denial and illusion.

Nazi Wives is a very readable and interesting popular history of the wives of the top brass of the evil Nazi regime which ruled Germany from 1933-1945. British author James Wyle has done a good job in examining though briefly the lives of several of the women married to the top officials of the Third Reich. Among them:
Eva Braun-Longtime mistress of Hitler who committed suicide alongside him in the Berlin Bunker in 1945. A somewhat shallow person who loved fashion, movies, sports, animals and good times.
Margaret Himmler-The bossy and plain wife of Heinrich Himmler the devilish chief of the SS. She produced a child Gudrun by Himmler. She learned of his affair with his secretary and served in the German Red Cross.
Magda Goebbels-She murdered her six children by Joseph Goebbels the infamous Minister of Propaganda and Popular Culture. Her eldest son by her first husband Quant survived the war. A beautiful, sophisticated woman she contemplated divorce from her amorous husband Joseph but Hitler ordered the couple to remain married.
She was also unfaithful and loved fashion and high society.
Emma Goering-An actress who was Herman Goering the chief of the Luftwaffe’s second wife. He worshipped his first wife the Swede anti-Jewish woman Carin who died in 1931. She survived the war and had one child by Herman.
Gerda Bormann -She had several children and was a fanatical Nazi. Her father was a Nazi official and she remained faithful to the brutish Bormann. She was friend of Eva Braunn.
Ilse Hess-Another fanatical Nazi who lived despite the fact her husband deputy-Fuhrer Rudolf Hess flew to England in 1941 seeking a peace treaty to end the war between England and Germany.

• Nazi Wives

• The Women at the Top of Hitler’s Germany
• By: James Wyllie