Wendy Lower’s stunning account from the part ofGerman women within the Eastern Front-not just as plunderers and directwitnesses but as actual killers-powerfully revises background. Many youngnurses, instructors, secretaries, and wives noticed the rising Nazi empire being a kindof “Wild East” of chance, yet they cannot have dreamed what theywould do there. Lower, drawing on two decades of archival study andfieldwork over the Holocaust, access to post-Soviet documents, and interviewswith German witnesses, presents convincing evidence that these females wenton “purchasing sprees” and passionate outings towards the Jewish ghettos of Poland, Ukraine,and Belarus, and they had been present at killing-field picnics, not onlyproviding refreshment but also taking part in the shooting of Jews. And Loweruncovers the tales of SS wives-with kids of their own-whose brutality is as chilling as any in history.

Hitler’s Furies willchallenge our deepest beliefs using evidence hidden for seventy years: ladies can be just like brutal as guys.