Is anyone safe in Germany…especially the perfect female examples of the German race.

Gundi is one of the perfect, gorgeous German women chosen by the Reich to bear perfect children to create the master race. She does have a secret, though. Actually she has two secrets.

We meet Hilde who is a staunch follower of the Reich and one of the women who is willing to help fill Germany with perfect children.

And we meet Irma a former nurse and 44 years old. She will be the one encouraging the unwed mothers to stay healthy so they deliver these perfect children.

We meet these women during this dark time in history and at Lebensborn Society maternity home where women arrive already pregnant or will become pregnant by an approved German officer.

Ms. Coburn did amazing, thorough research on a topic I never knew about.

Historical fiction fans will enjoy CRADLES OF THE REICH.

There are many sensitive and heartbreaking topics addressed, and this idea of using German women in this way is something I couldn’t believe. 4/5

This book was given to me by the author via NetGalley for an honest review. ( )

I have read many books in this time period. However, I am not familiar with Nazi-run breeding homes or The Lebensborn Society. Jennifer really did bring to life the story of these three women, Gundi, Irma, and Hilde. I truly felt for them and what they were going through.

Because Gundi was the first one introduced in this book, I felt an instant connection with her. It did not change, so you could say I had the strongest connection out of the three women with her. Although, this is not to say that Hilde and Irman did not play big parts in this book as well.

Once I started reading, I did find myself getting lost in a good way. This book was a fast read for me. Readers who enjoy reading historical fiction will want to pick up a copy of this book. Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn is not to be missed! ( )

I have heard of this deplorable Nazi use and abuse of young girls and women (actually any young person), but this delves much deeper into the difficulties the young people of Hilter's Germany found themselves trapped in. This is a fictioal account, but it is based on facts. I encourage all to read it. This is not a fun read, but we need to know history to avoid repeating it. i highly recommend this book. It brings the reality of the madness these young people faced to life.

FROM NETGALLEY: Three women, a nation seduced by a madman, and the Nazi breeding program to create a so-called master race.

At Heim, 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. ( )

Being the memoirs of a woman who was seized into the Lebensborn program of the Nazi SS and brought from her native land to live as a sort of foster child in Germany. The Lebensborn program, among many other things, took children who met Nazi standards of racial purity from countries which they conquered and assigned them to German families, usually with SS connections. As a personal memoir of a genealogical search to discover her birth name and family, country of origin, path to Germany, and her foster parents' connection with the program, this is pretty interesting. When she attempts to broaden out into historical context, however, disaster strikes. The number of historical errors herein is truly appalling; she has, inter alia, Nazis changing the name of the city of Danzig, which had been called Danzig from time immemorial--it was the Poles who changed it to Gdansk when it was transferred to them. And I'm sure that Franklin Roosevelt would be surprised to learn that he attended the Potsdam Conference, since he had been dead for four months. Her account of Yugoslav partisan activity during the war is misleading at best. Fact checker, please. As far as her search for her roots goes, it is quite interesting, especially when she stays with her own story. She digresses a lot into other people's stories, though, especially after she joins a group for fellow Lebensborn children, which causes her narration to lose energy and continuity, and which, together with some rather abstract musings about humans and their need for identity, make the book's ending more than a little draggy. ( )

Hitler’s Forgotten Children

Anyone who has seen Les Mis knows the Jean Valjean song ‘Who Am I?’ and it is a question we all ask ourselves at some point in our own lives, but when you come from a Central Eastern European country it sometimes can take you down paths you did not know exist. Coming from a Polish family that suffered at the hands of Nazi and Soviet alike and brought up with the horrors of what both did to the people from the Polish Baltic down to Yugoslavia in the south, the Jew and Slav were victims, some more than others.

Like most Eastern European families, those who have had to live in a country other than that of their forefathers since 1945 for various reasons, where were brought up on the rumours and knowledge of the Russians committed crimes at Katyn (which they still try and deny) and that the Nazis stole babies away from their mothers across Eastern Europe but never really understood why.

Hitler’s Forgotten Children is Ingrid von Oelhafen version of that age old question of who am I? Even more so when she discovered that she was an unwitting part of the Lebensborn programme created by Himmler and that the Nazis had done everything they could to destroy her true identity. This is her journey in to finding who she really was as well as an examination of Lebensborn a much forgotten Nazi pogrom to create more ‘Aryan’ children that had been born to people who were ‘substandard’.

To those who think they know much about what happened during the Second World War tend not to know much about Lebensborn, and this is part memoir, part history lesson. This is an important book that will guide you through what was and still is a hideous pogrom whose children are still coming to terms with it today.

Lebensborn is the name of the pogrom that Himmler created for children that were born to Slavic women but were ‘blonde haired and blue eyed’ clearly a freak of nature and had to be taken from them and placed with good ‘Aryan’ families in Germany. Lebensborn shows the obsession that the Nazis had with blood lines and racial purity and this book covers all aspects of this terrible history.

What we learn from this book is the Ingrid felt dislocated from her German family and how she was dumped in a children’s home after the escape from the Soviet zones in Germany after the war. Her and her ‘brother’ dumped there by her good German ‘mother’. It is only after the end of the cold war and the end of the divided Germany did the facts start to be revealed and that Ingrid found that she was a Lebensborn child. From there started a painful but important journey and how shocking it is when you see the bureaucracy and the state secrecy that stopped her discovering the truth about herself.

Hitler’s Forgotten Children is part memoir part history lesson that many who think they know about the Nazis will be shocked at. One has to remember that these babies were stolen during the war and are in the 70s now and some are coming to terms and some just cannot come to terms with their status. They are still unwitting victims today and reading Ingrid von Oelhafen’s account you will find a well written well researched and knowledgeable account, written with compassion.

This is a one of a number of dark periods of European history and this is still going on today as Europe has still come to terms with the effects of war and being divided. Think how hard it must be to know that most of your life has been a lie and the one you should have had was stolen from you in the aid of ‘racial purity’. ( )