What a fantastic book! I highly recommend this if you’re into women’s history or WWII history.

This book is well researched and well written. Rather than openly condemning (or supporting) them, Wyllie strives to present their lives in a neutral perspective. These couples are brought to life in a way that a both humanizes them and makes their evil acts more atrocious.

I really enjoyed the fresh and unique perspective of WWII. There is a lot of material about what each husband is doing, but I think that was expected and necessary. To really understand half of a couple, you need to know what the other half is doing. But there is still plenty of information about each woman. Even though I’ve read quite a few books about WWII, before this book I couldn’t have named any top Nazi leader’s wife. So I learned quite a bit in this book. The book even follows each woman until their death, so we really do get a complete look into their adult lives.

One drawback in this type of book is that we are constantly bouncing between the women, which can get confusing. But Wyllie does a good job of trying to group the women together (after all, they weren’t all hanging out together every weekend) and mentioning their husbands enough so that we remember who is part of each couple. It would have been helpful if their last names were used a bit more often though.


Thanks to NetGalley, St Martin’s Press, and James Wyllie for sending me an ebook version of this book in exchange for an honest review!