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3.88 AVERAGE
3.88 AVERAGE
2.5⭐️
The author leads the reader to accompany three German women into the Lebensborn Society during 1939. The Lebensborn Society was a Nazi sanctioned program to breed a pure Aryan race. Large dormitories and maternity homes were built throughout Germany to care for unwed pregnant women and to breed "racially desirable" children.
I, like many of you, have read many WWII fiction books. This book’s premise initially grabbed me because it’s a largely untold story. I was very interested to know more about the Lebensborn program. This was such a literary opportunity! Unfortunately it fell short.
The setting is factually accurate but the storytelling was incredibly basic. The characters are mere avatars for a specific stereotype and they lack any real depth. The overly simplistic style prevented me from truly engaging with the story.
Lastly, the ending is abrupt and terribly incomplete. I was left wanting (and not in a good way).
Unfortunately, if you’re seriously interested in the Lebensborn Society, I recommend finding another book on the subject.
The author leads the reader to accompany three German women into the Lebensborn Society during 1939. The Lebensborn Society was a Nazi sanctioned program to breed a pure Aryan race. Large dormitories and maternity homes were built throughout Germany to care for unwed pregnant women and to breed "racially desirable" children.
I, like many of you, have read many WWII fiction books. This book’s premise initially grabbed me because it’s a largely untold story. I was very interested to know more about the Lebensborn program. This was such a literary opportunity! Unfortunately it fell short.
The setting is factually accurate but the storytelling was incredibly basic. The characters are mere avatars for a specific stereotype and they lack any real depth. The overly simplistic style prevented me from truly engaging with the story.
Lastly, the ending is abrupt and terribly incomplete. I was left wanting (and not in a good way).
Unfortunately, if you’re seriously interested in the Lebensborn Society, I recommend finding another book on the subject.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
emotional
informative
tense
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Based in the Third Reich Era in Germany, in the beginning of Hilter's dictatorship, three women have to navigate their way through a circumstances that lead them to a Nazi breeding home in Bavaria.
Gundi - an Aryan beauty who is secretly part of the resistance - falls pregnant with her Jewish boyfriend's baby, she is sent to the Lebensborn Society maternity home as the state is under the impression that the baby is of pure German blood.
Hilde, a true believer in the cause finds herself at the home after she fall's pregnant with a Nazi official's baby.
Irma, a middle-aged nurse looking to start over after she walked in on a Jewish women heading into her Fiancé's basement and assumes he has been unfaithful.
***Spoilers!!
As things unfold, Irma realises that not everything is what it seems to be and discovers that the head nurse condones soldiers using there "mothers in training" as sex slaves, babies, whose parents aren't engaged, get taken from them and put up for adoption and God forbid that a women gives birth to a darker skin child that could be misconstrued for a Jew! That baby would be "cleansed" by lethal injection. And all this for the name of Germany! Hilde ends up without a career or her status of being a Nazi Official's mistress and Gundi has to escape after her baby is born to save both their lives.
My thoughts:
What a heavy read! I'm still unsettled by all the things I have learned from this book. This was a dark time in Germany, where Nazis were killing and framing Jews, kicking them out their homes, throwing them in work camps, burning down their property and stealing their belongings. My heart aches for Jews who had to live through that.
Past the heavy stuff though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was hectic but it was beautiful and hopeful. The women formed connections that saved their lives, and their souls. It wasn't a happy ending for everyone but those who got theirs deserved it. I'll say it again, this book was BEAUTIFUL
Gundi - an Aryan beauty who is secretly part of the resistance - falls pregnant with her Jewish boyfriend's baby, she is sent to the Lebensborn Society maternity home as the state is under the impression that the baby is of pure German blood.
Hilde, a true believer in the cause finds herself at the home after she fall's pregnant with a Nazi official's baby.
Irma, a middle-aged nurse looking to start over after she walked in on a Jewish women heading into her Fiancé's basement and assumes he has been unfaithful.
***Spoilers!!
As things unfold, Irma realises that not everything is what it seems to be and discovers that the head nurse condones soldiers using there "mothers in training" as sex slaves, babies, whose parents aren't engaged, get taken from them and put up for adoption and God forbid that a women gives birth to a darker skin child that could be misconstrued for a Jew! That baby would be "cleansed" by lethal injection. And all this for the name of Germany! Hilde ends up without a career or her status of being a Nazi Official's mistress and Gundi has to escape after her baby is born to save both their lives.
My thoughts:
What a heavy read! I'm still unsettled by all the things I have learned from this book. This was a dark time in Germany, where Nazis were killing and framing Jews, kicking them out their homes, throwing them in work camps, burning down their property and stealing their belongings. My heart aches for Jews who had to live through that.
Past the heavy stuff though, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It was hectic but it was beautiful and hopeful. The women formed connections that saved their lives, and their souls. It wasn't a happy ending for everyone but those who got theirs deserved it. I'll say it again, this book was BEAUTIFUL
dark
emotional
inspiring
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was lucky enough to get an advanced reader copy of this book from Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley.
It started off great. I flew through the first third. I loved the character development and background of Gundi and Irma. Although I wasn’t a fan of Hilde from the beginning, I understood the need for a character that wasn’t meant to be liked to give a different view of the experience. The middle of the book lost its luster for me, and prevented me from rating it higher than 3 stars. I just didn’t find the girls’ time at Heim Hochland interesting. It probably didn’t help that I despised the whole concept of the Lebensborn Society and the way the girls and babies were treated. And the fact that they were basically living in a whore house. The last third of the book brought me back to my original thinking and I was quickly able to finish it.
As much as I disliked the premise of the Nazi mentality, I appreciated the truth that was involved in writing this story.
It started off great. I flew through the first third. I loved the character development and background of Gundi and Irma. Although I wasn’t a fan of Hilde from the beginning, I understood the need for a character that wasn’t meant to be liked to give a different view of the experience. The middle of the book lost its luster for me, and prevented me from rating it higher than 3 stars. I just didn’t find the girls’ time at Heim Hochland interesting. It probably didn’t help that I despised the whole concept of the Lebensborn Society and the way the girls and babies were treated. And the fact that they were basically living in a whore house. The last third of the book brought me back to my original thinking and I was quickly able to finish it.
As much as I disliked the premise of the Nazi mentality, I appreciated the truth that was involved in writing this story.
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
**Excerpt from part of a review written for The Collinwood Chronicle and published online (some of it, in print) September 2022
I turned to Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn, to bring to this review a serious historical book (still fictional), something engaging worth the trouble to seek and find (but not destroy).
This author takes us to Nazi Germany. Here we find out information we may never have been privy to, in our former education, specifically a part of Henrich Heimmlers plan for the master race, if it had survived. And, while the story is fiction, there are realities shared in the book that are true, that played out in real life with real people from the past.
Hitler’s plan for eugenics and that, there were places for pregnant women to go and have their children which were not as “perfect” as the Nazi’s portrayal of what was (going on there). If you are not familiar with the word eugenics it is defined by the Oxford language dictionary as the study of how to arrange the reproduction within a human population to arrange the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. It was a discredited study after the Nazis but here, in America, we woman (if poor or thought “loose”/easy) also suffered through this in the early 1900’s.
I turned to Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn, to bring to this review a serious historical book (still fictional), something engaging worth the trouble to seek and find (but not destroy).
This author takes us to Nazi Germany. Here we find out information we may never have been privy to, in our former education, specifically a part of Henrich Heimmlers plan for the master race, if it had survived. And, while the story is fiction, there are realities shared in the book that are true, that played out in real life with real people from the past.
Hitler’s plan for eugenics and that, there were places for pregnant women to go and have their children which were not as “perfect” as the Nazi’s portrayal of what was (going on there). If you are not familiar with the word eugenics it is defined by the Oxford language dictionary as the study of how to arrange the reproduction within a human population to arrange the occurrence of heritable characteristics regarded as desirable. It was a discredited study after the Nazis but here, in America, we woman (if poor or thought “loose”/easy) also suffered through this in the early 1900’s.