One thing I always get asked by people when they see I'm reading about Hitler, or Stalin, or the Nazis, is why. The only way I can answer this is by saying that I want to understand and try as I might, I still don't get it. Living in the UK and watching Russian invading Ukraine, watching Marine LePen gain in popularity in France and the less said about Boris, the better. What was witnessed in the 1930s to 1940s has scary comparisons with the present. The sad thing is, with all that's been written on this era, and all we should have learned, we seem set on repeating this craziness again.

I really enjoyed Carney's book and am gald to have it as an edition to my bookshelf.

Heinrich Himmler wanted the SS to be the elite and at the forefront of multiplying the German Reich with strong Nordic stock. Every man and his fiancée had to submit a race and settlement questionnaire, a genealogical tree, a hereditary health form, and a medical exam form to be sure they produced only the best children.
Himmler wanted them to have at least four children. Illegitimate children were fine, as long as they were racially healthy. He didn’t want them to wait until after the war in case the man died in battle; they needed to ensure their lineage. In the midst of the war, the SS spent over 111,000 RM to get husbands and wives together on furloughs with the aim of achieving pregnancy.
This is a research book. While interesting, it’s slow reading, and frequently I skimmed over statistics. I would have preferred more of a layman’s book, with more case studies to get a feel for what the Nazis lives were like.

Wasn't sure what to expect but it was very interesting. Very well researched. Would definitely recommend.

From 1931 to 1945 Nazi SS officers were encouraged to make suitable marriages and produce perfect children for the Fatherland. According to the “science” of eugenics, it was imperative of them to contribute to the future of the new, pure Aryan race. This chilling book explores the role of the SS as fathers and husbands and tries to examine why cold-blooded killers could also invest time and emotion in their families. It’s an academic text, for sure, but clearly and accessibly written and meticulously researched. I found it a bit heavy-going at times, but welcomed the opportunity to gain insight into this area of Nazi life and overall found the book illuminating and thought-provoking – although nothing surely can explain the disconnect between official duties, carried out with such brutality, and apparently caring relationships with wives and children.

This book puts a human face on who we thing are inhuman. A good book with a unique viewpoint for any WWII history fan.

I've always enjoyed books about the world war 2. And this book is a new perspective of the same story. We forget that the Nazis were "normal" people. In the sense that they had families, and wives. But that's about as close to human as they get. I would recommend this book if you already enjoy WW2 topics.

An interesting examination of how much fatherhood was influenced by Nazi principles by those in the SS. I am glad that someone has completed a study on this subject and can see this being worked into a class about the time period.

Thank you for the opportunity to receive an egalley of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS by Amy Carney is an amazing insight into the control methods of a socialist regime. Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeitpartei or National Socialist German Workers Party was a grand socialist scheme of a government gone mad with power and the aberrant science of eugenics. This book relates the story of men and governments intrusion into the lives of their subordinates and the eventual detrimental effect on the entire population of Germany. Ideas become an obsession with breeding programs based on racial purity, bloodlines, eugenics, genetic perfection or genetic abnormalities. Numerous examples of how the Nazi SS sought perfection with some good but mostly flawed thinking. Excellent book with a story of how an evil governments belief System and teachings can destroy a country in a few years. Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for making this book available to read and review. The only criticism is it would have been an easier read on Kindle.

It was physicially very hard to read. I could not finish it. Protected PDFs have very tiny print in my Nook-almost it impossible for me to see it. I stopped about halfway through.

While some of the material was interesting, some of it was very repetitious. I often find books written by academics not well written for lay people. I think the author needed to go more deeply into mainstream German attitudes towards family and then examine the SS policy. Also disappointing was that so much of the book concerned the SS before the war. I would think much of it change when the SS was sent to war and/or work in the concentration camps.

Again the tiny print that this book appear on my Nook did not help.

The Nazi party had many idyllic visions of leadership that did not end at racial purity and land grabs. The SS leadership sought to create an ideal homelife primarily among the leaders that would be emulated by the rank and file. Amy Carney details all of this in exquisite detail in her book Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS.

The book is riveting with fascinating factoids and eugenics related details. The main element of control over all even down to the individual family was started by Heinrich Himmler. However, this type of meta control for the good of all is what some religions foster for the betterment of society or their concept of society. I judge books about the SS very simply. If the book reminds me of a well written episode of The Twilight Zone, it is a very good Third Reich book. Rod Serling and Richard Matheson (leading Twilight Zone writers) would have been very proud of this tome.

The only thing missing from this treatise is just the thing that would have ruined it. The idyllic homelife formula is very efficient as laid out here, rendering a cookie cutter Nazi family. Thinking about this "formula" and how it would work in the future if the regime had succeeded is necessary but that's another book. Not a beach book (nor an airplane book as I was constantly interrupted by turbulence) but a well written examination on a nightmarish time.

I received an advance copy to read from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you.

#MarriageAndFatherhoodInTheNaziSs #NetGalley

Based on unique documents from the archives of the SS, Amy Carney succeeded to create a comperehensive overview of the lineage families within the Nazi elites, mostly focused on controlled parenting and a complex genetical selection for professional assignments. After 1933, 'only a person who descended from a superior racial lineage would have the hereditary credentials to join the SS', part of the larger race-based policy developed at different levels of the German society.

It profiled not only the SS as a racial elite - with the genetic lineage the main element evaluating the worth of a person and his or her place within the hierarchy - but created the model for the entire German 'Volk' as well. 'Himmler tasked each SS man with the responsibility of fathering a racially healthy family; the duty was repeatedly emphasized in commands, rhetorics, and policy'. With a clear distinction of the roles within the family and the mission to provide to the society at least to two children per family, with the corresponding financial state-supported measures, those elites were already in place at the end of the war and the model survived at certain extent in the post-war Germany.

Carney is mostly focused on the analytical overview of the policies during the Nazi times, with an explanatory approach which doesn't leave too much space for a critical and comparative approach on the sources. Given the novelty and extent of the information, which will extensively influence the content of similar approaches regarding the elites during that those times, the study is mostly self-contained and explores the material. There will be the duty of further academic studies to diversify the approach and create the theoretical models and support theories in this respect.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

A new angle on WW2, something I hadn’t even thought about previously- how the SS men were encouraged to have families and choose wives who fit within their racial profile of superiority. A real insight and fresh look on Nazi behaviour with some amazing facts.

Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS is an interesting book that digs into the personal lives of the SS. It was interesting learning about how involved the Nazi government was in the soldier's lives. I felt that there was a lot of research done by Amy Carney and the book is well written.

If you're an avid reader of this genre, then Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS is a must read for you.

Amy Carney produces a very detailed and well written book on the role of fatherhood and the family as envisioned by the SS for its members. Using extensive documentation Carney leaves nothing out and provides a picture of what can only be considered the last word on how much the Nazis wanted the pleasures of heart and home to be perfect for their special category of elite and racially pure defenders and standard bearers of fascism.

This book reminds one of Michele Foucault most astute observations. It was through the greater access to pleasure and freedom from moral social constraint that was the driving force of Fascism. This book outlines how far this would be the case.

The book however lacks context and comparison. By itself this almost idyll does not connect with the broader context. The ideals of family and eugenics were not delivered fully formed to the SS but were part of the ideology of the Empires of Europe, and the worship of a masculinity. Marie Stopes who went further than most non-Germans to create the SS family ideology in here praised does not even get a mention. Nor is the power of the gentleness of fatherhood and family life inculcated into the married SS member contrasted with the brutality it espoused to women and children as being justified. This book requires some context.

This book is in serious risk of supporting blind, deluded and dangerous ideas. The SS was a gang of murder and rapine that created destruction of civilized Europe wherever it went. Carney does her job well in this book, but I feel the subject needs to be seen in perspective. The brutality and homicide expected of the SS member should have been contrasted with the kindly father of the happy home the SS promoted. This is one part of a Jekyll and Hyde, an important part that we must understand as well to be sure. Its not that they were just killers, its that they were made to be killers that could return home to a loving home to produce more murders.

Very interesting! Well written and engaging nonfiction about marriage and family in Nazi Germany for soldiers. The author did a great job researching and crafting the information in easy to digest and hard to put down content!

"Marriage and Fatherhood in the Nazi SS" was a really interesting read. I had no idea to much the Nazi government tried to get involved in the personal lives of the SS. It was really interesting to read about the measures taken by Himmler in order to ensure child-rich families and ideologies behind these measures.

While I was aware of the "science" of eugenics before, I had usually heard about it in the context of forced sterilization and euthanasia. Reading about how it influenced the personal lives of SS members and their choice of life partners was really interesting.

The chapters on the family community and the way fathers were supposed to interact with their children were especially intriguing because some of the ideas were really modern and still not taken for granted today: fathers being supposed to take care of their children (in terms of sharing child-rearing tasks with their wives such as changing diapers and feeding children their bottles) and widows and father-less children being taken care of and respected. The SS' ideas on illegitimacy were really interesting in this context because single-mothers still face a certain stigma today. Reading about how a society known for their brutality, cruelty, and bigotry actually tried to get rid of this stigma in some way was really interesting and enlightening.

Overall, this book offers comprehensive information on a section of Nazi Germany I never really thought about before and does so in a well-written and interesting manner.

I would have loved to have read this book, but as i read on a Kindle, I am unable to read pdf's. I should have read a previous review on here with same problem. Many thanks.

This book was very insightful on the families of the SS. Learning about how Hitler was supported and enabled through the lower ranks of the Reich was facinating.