Hitler's Women

Of course I love my husband, but my love for Hitler is stronger, wrote Magda Goebbels, the socialite wife of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and super-mom of the Third Reich.

An unprecedented look at the women of Hitler's inner circle, Hitler's Women presents six chilling portraits of the leading women in Hitler's life and the role they played in the Nazi regime. Here are the lives of Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress, whose lifelong dream of marrying the Führer was fulfilled shortly before they committed suicide; Magda Goebbels, who married her husband to be close to Hitler; Richard Wagner's daughter-in-law Winifred, who refused two proposals of marriage from Hitler; Leni Riefenstahl, the brilliant filmmaker who became the Nazis' propagandist; diva Zarah Leander, who denied ever being a Nazi but made a fortune in films for the fatherland; and screen goddess Marlene Dietrich, who left Germany and fought Hitler with all means at her disposal.

The lives of these women illuminate how the Nazis envisaged German womanhood—loyal, stylish, talented, and maternal—and show that it is often a short step from collaboration to dissent, from conformity to resistance. Award-winning German journalist Guido Knopp mines diaries, letters, unpublished photographs, and interviews with friends to create an absorbing, intimate look into a dark part of history.