Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn

I was lucky enough to receive an e-Arc from the author and also surprised me with a finished copy a few weeks ago! This historical fiction novel is out Tuesday 10/11 and I highly recommend it!

This is a historical fiction novel following three women who find themselves involved with the Nazi’s Lebensborn Society. This was the Third Reich’s program to breed the “perfect” Aryan child. The three women have vastly different perspectives of this program:
Gundi, who becomes pregnant and brought to a home where she will carry the baby where it will then be taken from her for adoption.
Irma, who is a staff nurse at the home and unknowingly becomes involved in this society.
Hilde, who I s a young 18 year old nazi supporter who is proud to carry the baby of a Nazi officer.

This was something in history I had no clue about. It is a work of fiction but based on true events and wonderfully researched. I could tell the author did a lot of work making it historically accurate. This novel evokes the same feelings I felt when I read Hold My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez. I highly recommend this novel to history lovers

I love World War II fiction and this added a new dimension to situations. It’s a setting that is fresh and the characters are well drawn. I read in one sitting!

I was really excited to sink my teeth into Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn, which tells the shockingly true and vastly undocumented story of the Lebensborn program, which sought to increase the number of Aryan and "racially pure" German children by having young, eligible women procreate with top Nazi officials. And while that bit of history is undoubtedly interesting, I found myself disappointed with the character arcs, the ending, and the writing.

Told from the three alternating points of view--Hilde, the young power hungry Hitlerite who finds herself pregnant by a prominent married Nazi officer; Irma, a nurse with scars left over from the Great War who has recently broken it off with her sweetheart; and Gundi, a perfect example of Aryan purity and beauty who is pregnant with her Jewish lover's baby and worked with the Resistance--Cradles of the Reich suffers from the lack of development that comes with trying to do too many POVs within such a short book.

Hilde was one of the most interesting and flawed, desperate to become something other than a wife and itching to do her patriotic duty. Unfortunately, she has next to no growth and one of the most disappointing conclusions to a character arc I've ever read. Gundi is undoubtedly the star and the best portrayed, with the last long chapter devoted completely to her harrowing escape from the Lebensborn program at Heim Hochland. Irma changed for the better by the end, though I had doubts how she could be so careless and inconsiderate in the beginning and the make such a 180 by the end. It seemed to not be in her character, to be so selfless, and I didn't feel she had enough happen to her to make her change so drastically.

With regards to the writing, sometimes it was beautiful and wonderfully descriptive, and at other times read like a summary with too much telling and because of that, failed to get an emotional response from me.

I really wanted to like this better, but it felt like the whole book was leading up to a big end, only for it to fall completely flat! Read it for the history, which was obviously well researched, but know that there won't be any satisfactory ending here.

World War II fiction is one of my favorite genres and this book did not disappoint. Cradles of the Reich follows three women and how their lives intersect at a maternity home which was also a breeding home. The story is told through the 3 women and each story has a little twist. This book was very well researched and I was not previously familiar with these maternity homes but was not at all surprised by their existence. I became totally engrossed in each women's story and also by their personal growth throughout the course of the novel. I was also satisfied with the ending for each character. For fans of historical fiction, this is a must read.

Another one has been added to my favorite list! I had a hard time putting this down and then it got to a point the I didn't. I had to finish it to see how it ended.
The Nazi breeding program was a horrific and unthinkable event, yet, the story being told is fascinating and draws you in to each different side of all the girls/women involved. Those who are readily on board with what the program is all about (the mothers and the nurses), those who don't really have a clue about what is about to happen once the child is born (mothers and nurses), and those who can't believe what is going on and do their part help out.

The Lebensborn program set up by the Germans was something I was vaguely aware 0f but my imagination couldn't grasp the scope of what they did. This story focuses on three women who are sent to Heim Hochland. Gundi is the perfect Aryan woman and when she becomes pregnant it is assumed she will have the perfect Aryan child but in her work for the resistance she falls in love with Leo who is Jewish. Hilde is an 18-year-old who is a true believer and will do anything to benefit herself including seducing a high-ranking German officer. Irma was a nurse during the Great War and still has nightmares but after a break up with her fiancé she accepts a job officer to work at Heim Hochland thinking that working with pregnant women wouldn't be traumatic.

The characters were very well defined and the life in Heim Hochland was interesting. Even though there was a war happening and food was in short supply these women had plenty. The home was filled with all kinds of luxury probably stolen from the Jews.

My only complaint was the ending. Of course it could go on and on with what happened to Gundi and her baby but the end was so abrupt leaving me with questions of what happened to other characters.

Thank you to Netgalley and Sourcebooks for providing me with a digital copy.

I'm disappointed to say I couldn't get past the first chapter of this book. The Nazi in the opening scene was so openly crude and sexually abusive that I will not be finishing this book. I feel the author could have written this scene much more discreetly. I know that the Nazis were truly horrible and malicious people, and that their crimes should not be hid, but it just made me so uncomfortable reading this. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for this e-book. A positive review was not required, and the thoughts above are my own.

To promote the growth of a desirable Aryan population, the Lebensborn program was created in late 1935. A group of homes were set up for pregnant German women to safely give birth to what Nazi authorities deemed as racially valuable children as well as to provide a means for young women to become impregnated by suitable German men. The quest for a German master-race is hauntingly fictionalized through the lives of three women in Cradles of the Reich.

In 1939 Gundi Schiller was unmarried and pregnant. As a member of the Edelweiss Pirates, a resistance group, she met and fell in love with Leo Solomon, a Jewish man, who was now missing. When she is told that she needs to enter the Lebensborn program at Heim Hochland, Gundi knows that she must protect the identity of her child's father. Single Hilde Kramer enters the program, thrilled that she is pregnant by the married and much older Obergruppenführer Werner Ziegler. She is proud to show her allegiance to the Reich. Irma Binz decides to take a position as a nurse at Heim Hochland after a life of disappointments. Unmarried and childless, she is excited to have the chance to support the women and their babies.

Through much research, author Jennifer Coburn has skillfully brought the Lebensborn program to the forefront. As with so many stories about WWII, this impactful book sheds a light on yet another dark and despicable aspect of this horrible period of history. Through historical fiction, a story of heroism and strength is told representing those who tried to make a difference amidst all the horror.

These types of stories are never easy to read yet they help us to never forget.

Rated 4.25 stars.

💙🦋Book Review💙🦋
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Thank you so much @jennifercoburnbooks and @netgalley for the advanced copy of Cradles of the Reich which is released tomorrow! It was a tough read as most from WWII era historical reads are. But I think it was an important story as well. It was something that I previously had not thought about in regards to the Holocaust and pregnancy. Beautifully written, deep, moving, and overall a fascinating read! The synopsis is below.
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Summary: At Heim Hochland, a Nazi breeding home in Bavaria, three women's fates are irrevocably intertwined. Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. An Aryan beauty, she's secretly a member of a resistance group. Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the cause and is thrilled to carry a Nazi official's child. And Irma, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after personal devastation. All three have everything to lose.

Based on untold historical events, this novel brings us intimately inside the Lebensborn Society maternity homes that actually existed in several countries during World War II, where thousands of "racially fit" babies were bred and taken from their mothers to be raised as part of the new Germany. But it proves that in a dark period of history, the connections women forge can carry us through, even driving us to heroism we didn't know we had within us.
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QOTD: do you enjoy reading historical books?
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4.5 stars. When I first read the publisher synopsis of Cradles of The Reich a few months ago, it quickly became one of my most anticipated reads of this year. Having just read it, I can say that it delivered! One of my favourite reads of this year.

This is fantastic historical fiction based upon the little known (to me) Nazi breeding program created to propagate the so-called ‘master race’. The story is told from the perspectives of three young women living at one of these breeding homes in Bavaria during WWII - one a beautiful, pregnant young German university student, the second a nurse who starts to work there when her life falls apart, and the third a believer in the Nazi cause who is the pregnant young mistress of a high-ranking married Nazi official.

Each character has a different perspective on the breeding program and a different experience at the home but share the common desire to gain control of their futures. I enjoyed seeing the story through these different viewpoints.

The story moves seamlessly between the three storylines and we get to see the inner workings of the breeding program, life at the maternity home (which also doubled as a brothel for Nazi officers) and the relentless drive of the Nazis to get rid of any “defects” from the German population, including murdering children with disabilities, stealing young children to raise them as Germans, and, of course, the genocide of the Jewish population. The author talks about the research that she did for this novel in the Afterword and it is very evident throughout the novel. I felt like I was there in the story with the characters.

The pacing of the novel was very good and the build-up to the ending was very tense and fast-paced. I found myself holding my breath and quickly turning the pages! I love historical fiction like this which shines a light on lesser known parts of WWII events all in an engaging, clear, easy-to-read style.

Thanks to Sourcebooks Landmark and Netgalley for this ARC. All opinions are my own.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for the eARC in exchange for a honest review.

This book was a struggle for me.

Overall I was really intrigued by the premise and was hooked quickly by the story, but that feeling petered out by the midway point.

Besides parts of Hilde’s story, I felt like a lot of the book was just waiting for things to happen. I wish the characters had more agency and helped to actively shape the plot, but they just reacted to situations that occurred.

The ending also felt abrupt. Hilde’s story felt incomplete. Irma’s felt rushed to conclusion over a revelation she has, but I didn’t feel like there was a lot of lead up to her having that relation. Gundi’s story was the most complete, but it still felt like it was missing a piece at the end.

I appreciate the history behind this story (that I wasn’t even aware of!), and I’m glad the author chose to shine a light on the topic. It’s worth the read if you want to learn about the plight of Germany’s women during the Nazi regime.

It has been a while since I’ve read a WWII story and this is definitely a chilling and disturbing part of history I did not know about ( and yes I fell down the Google rabbit hole ) .

✔️ the three POV - Gundi a pregnant resistance fighter; Hilde a young girl who believes in the cause and wants to have a Nazi official’s baby ; Irma, a nurse who is hiding from the truths around her while trying to find her place in the world - provided very different perspectives
✔️ although a difficult subject, the story is easy to read and keeps you engaged ; I was invested I these women and their stories
🔘 I would have liked an epilogue and find out what happened to these characters

This historical fiction is told through the POVs of 3 different German woman, each different ages and backgrounds and beliefs to tell a story about the Nazi breeding program. While the story itself is a work of fiction, the program it details was real. It always amazes me when I learn of a new horror from this time period. It is just shocking the depths to which the Nazi regime went to purify their country. I just can’t wrap my mind around the chilling horrors that occurred. I have never heard of this breeding program until this book, but I suppose it should not be surprising that they abused their own women and used their bodies for their own political agendas. It is interesting to read the German women’s point of views and learn more of the lengths to which the brainwashing was performed. Gundi was the perfect German female on the outside but had no ounce of hate in her, fell in love with a Jewish man, started working for the for the resistance, and discovered her secret weapon was her looks. Hilda was the brainwashed teenager who naively said and did whatever she could to climb the ranks in the Nazi party to try to gain the spotlight she was so deeply sought, but at what cost? Irma was the nurse that thought she could just keep her head down and ignore what was really going on until faced with such chilling realities and her eyes were finally opened. The book was very well written, fascinating, horrifying, and a must read for anyone that wants to learn more about this time period from different perspectives.

Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn is the intertwined story of three very different women who through a variety of circumstances find themselves at Heim Hochland , one of the Lebensborn centres where young Aryan women of good racial purity were used as "breeding stock" for the production of perfect children for the Fatherland.
Irma is a nurse and at the centre and sees her job as a way to escape from personal tragedy and difficult home circumstances. At 44 she is a mother figure to some of the young girls at the home, and over time begins to question her role and the management of the Lebensborn programme as a whole.
At eighteen Hilde is a true believer with plenty of ambition , and she is thrilled to be carrying the child of a powerful Nazi official, even if he is a married man. She is desperate to protect her future , and will do whatever it takes to get what she wants.
University student Gundi is also desperate, but for a very different reason. The last place she wants to be is at the centre , but her perfect Aryan beauty makes her an ideal candidate. Less than ideal is the fact that the father of her child is Jewish, and like her a member of the resistance. If the staff of the home discover this truth, the lives of Gundi, her baby and all her family will be at risk .
Through the eyes of these very different women the reader learns about one of the lesser known secrets of Nazi era Germany. It was good to see an author tackling a lesser known aspect of the war, something that helps the book stand out in an oversaturated market of WW2 fiction. I appreciated the historical details incorporated into the story and found each of the narrators interesting as characters, even when they were not particularly likeable.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I have read several WWII historical fiction novels, but none had touched on this subject before. I'm always transfixed by this period in time because I can't even fathom living during this gut-wrenching period in history. I really enjoy books that show multiple perspectives and how they handle the situation. I found this to be well-written and engaging, but was disappointed in the ending as I felt like it ended abruptly.

Different take on WW2 era book. I hadn’t read about the nazi breeding program or homes before, did find that part interesting and wish it would have gone into more details about that. Three perspectives are told, a nurse, a German girl who was helping the resistance and a hard core nazi girl all end up at one of the homes. The ending was abrupt for me and left me with questions/ still wondering about many things. Overall I did enjoy the read but felt some things could have been left out and better more information could have been added and definitely wanted a more solid ending.

Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn

I remember first learning about the Lebensborn Society maternity homes from the same television program that that author mentions in her afterward. I spent time researching what I could when I learned of it. The program was far reaching in the ways it intruded into the lives of others, all for the goal of "racial hygiene".

We follow three fictional women who become cogs in the wheels of this program. One young woman, Gundi, is pregnant by the Jewish man she loves but she hides that fact as she is whisked off, against her will, to bear what is supposed to be a "racially pure" baby. The other young woman, Hilde, is a pregnant zealot for the madman that is destroying lives and people, she is a true believer and willing to do most things for her country. The third woman, Irma, is forty two, has burned bridges in her current life, so takes a job at the same breeding home in Bavaria where the other two young pregnant women have been taken.

Gundi could lose everything if her secret is found out, she's already lost almost everything. Hilde soon realizes that her situation isn't the wonderful setup she thought it was and she has to make some desperate choices to even salvage undesirable solutions. Irma sees that no matter how low things have sunk in her life, that she wants to at least make the time the girls are with her as good as they can be. But she can dig even deeper when the time comes and give even more. I enjoyed her awakening and the way she sees the past differently than she thought it was before she found out about this program.

I do wish the story didn't end so quickly, with so much left unsaid and unknown. The ending felt rushed, with much left dangling, unanswered. But the story is a good one and I felt for each woman, even misguided Hilde.

Thank you to Sourcebooks Landmark and NetGalley for this ARC.

Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn

This story has an easy flow that will capture your interest from the first chapter. It’s 1930s Germany and three young women’s lives converge in Heim Hochland, a maternity home in the German countryside. Coburn’s fictional characters are very nicely developed.

It’s shocking to learn through this well written historical novel that this home was a real place during the reign of Adolf Hitler. It was where the powerful supplied babies for the Reich. The Lebensborn Society can be added to the list of Nazi cruelty.

This four star book is a perfect story for historical fiction readers interested in learning about another facet of Nazi domination with which they may be not be familiar. My thanks to #SourceBooksLandmark and #NetGalley for this ARC.

Three different women come face to face at Helm Holmand, used to nurture young women in the Lebensborn program in Nazi Germany. Gurdi, who physically fits all the aspects the Nazis desire, is actually pregnant by the Jewish man she loves. Hilde, daughter of an SS officer, sees the program as wonderful and will do anything to bear an SS officer's child. And then there's Irma, a nurse who lost her husband and a lot of her hope during WWI, who has taken a job working with the young women. The threads of their stories come together, most dramatically near the end (no spoilers from me). It's fine historical fiction that shines a light on a horrible program through three characters who are, if not entirely sympathetic (here's looking at you Hilde) are intriguing and well drawn. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. Don't miss the afterword.

I received an ARC of this novel from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

A home for unwed mothers who were to populate Germany with Aryan children. The fanaticism of the people is so disturbing and so familiar in our current climate.