In Hitler's Shadow: Post-War Germany & the Girls of the BDM

Description

From the author of Hitler’s Girls comes the revealing true story of the aftermath of WWII—told by the Third Reich’s fallen “Angels of Death” themselves.   In the wake of Germany’s unconditional surrender in May 1945 and Japan’s subsequent surrender later that July, the Allied press proclaimed across the world “Victory! War is Over!” The truth for many Germans, particularly the teenage girls of the former Bund Deutscher Mädel, was that a new war was just beginning. They were members of the League of German Girls—ten to eighteen-years old—who had been indoctrinated and trained as armed “she-devils” of the Third Reich.   Drawing on eyewitness accounts, diary entries, and rare interviews with nearly forty members of the BDM, historian Tim Heath reveals the post-war hopes, horrors, and confusion through the eyes of the female wing of Hitler Youth. He recounts their struggle to rebuild their lives destroyed by years of war, and how a country, and these young women, came to terms with the terrible war crimes they were party to. Through these “interesting and sometimes horrifying accounts of how these women fared in the dying days of the Reich and in post-war Germany,” In Hitler’s Shadow sheds light on on one of the darkest times of the twentieth century (Historical Novel Society).