Hitler's Housewives takes a close, deeply personal look at the impact the Nazi party and World War II had on the women of the Germany -- the wives, mothers, daughters and sisters who cheered their nation's successes and suffered when it fell. The book, written by Tim Heath, explores the lives of several women, telling their stories through contemporary diaries and interviews conducted after the war.

Some of the women were proud Nazis and gladly did what the Reich expected them to do. Some were members of the Bund Deutscher Madel (League of German Girls), the female counterpart to Hitler Youth, and threw themselves wholeheartedly behind the cause. Others didn't necessarily support Hitler but supported the Reich because of the improvements it (initially) brought to their lives. Some were fearful of voicing dissent, while many simply continued to do whatever was needed to keep themselves and their families alive and prospering during a turbulent time.

Many of the women whose lives are laid bare here were teenagers or twentysomethings during the war. Some were young, unmarried girls, others were wives and mothers. All had stories to tell.

Take, for instance, Helena Koerg, who lost both her brother and her husband in the war. Although she raised three daughters and lived to a ripe old age, she never remarried and was, by all accounts, always depressed for what she had lost -- although she rarely talked about her late husband even to his daughters.

Or Adaline Seidel, who was 18 years old and dirt poor, with hard-working parents and a very sick mother living in a Berlin slum. Their circumstances were dire, but one day Hitler himself -- on a tour through their neighborhood -- knocked on their door, spoke with her parents and, later, made sure they received ample food, medicine and other supplies.

Or Kitka Obermann, who had an affair with a man, got pregnant, got divorced from her husband to marry the other man -- only for her new husband to be summoned to serve on the Eastern Front. He and his father made plans to flee into Switzerland, but before they could put their plan into action they were snatched by the Gestapo and executed in the woods, her children were taken from her, and Kitka was gang-raped and thrown into a work camp until her ex-husband was able to arrange her freedom. On her release, the Gestapo forced her to remarry her ex-husband.

Some of these women picked up where the men, who'd been sent to war, left off, taking jobs in factories, working as firefighters, doing whatever was needed. One woman's story describes her job in a secret munitions factory; a friend asked her to switch shifts, but when she arrived for work, the entire factory had been bombed to rubble and everyone she knew inside was dead.

The book doesn't touch much on the politics of the times, focusing more on the women and their lives at home, contrasting how things were for them at the beginning of the war and how dramatically their circumstances changed come 1943, when Germany started to lose.

Through interviews and diary entries, they talk about the loss of loved ones, their fears of losing the war, their fears of the enemy, their fears of the Reich, which would take away anyone who spoke out against them. Some even discuss their efforts to adapt to a vegetarian lifestyle, as promoted by Hitler, and the scraps they pulled together to make meals to sustain them. It's obvious as you read that some of these women are still afraid to tell their stories, too bitter, and for others it was simply too painful to express.

If the book has a flaw, it's the way the narrative jumps from person to person, time period to time period, so that a particular person's story or a sequence of events can sometimes be hard to follow. It's a minor complaint, but the scattered approach was at times a little frustrating.

Even so, Hitler's Housewives provides interesting information and valuable insights into the war at home for German women. A photo insert adds a certain poignancy to the stories -- showing, for instance, a happy Kitka Obermann posing before the war, and a melancholy Helena Koerg after war's end.

The stories here give a raw, candid look at the human side of the war from the German perspective -- a point of view that is often overlooked. The book also gives voice to the pragmatic German mentality of pulling oneself up by whatever means necessary and doing what you have to do to survive.