I am grateful to have received an advance copy of "Cradles of the Reich" in order to participate in a BookBrowse discussion starting this week. Jennifer Coburn has done a wonderful job of researching a part of German/Jewish and WWII history. I was not previously aware of most of what I learned from this book, and found myself going down bunny trail after bunny trail looking up the history behind the story. I would encourage everyone to read this and to read the author's notes at the end as well.

The primary story follows three women in Germany prior to and during WWII who came from three very different points of view. The parents, friends and lovers of these three women all play an important part in peeling away layers of history as well. While the main three characters are fictional, the organizations that they were a part of are not. And many of the people portrayed within the Nazi machine were real as well. This is great historical fiction - it creates a window through which to look into the minds of people that went through this traumatic period of time.

The primary Nazi focus was Heim Hochland, a Lebensborn home for unwed mothers and also essentially a brothal. Lebensborn was a Nazi program with the stated goal of increasing the number of children born who met the Nazi standards of "racially pure," according to Nazi eugenics. Forced procreation, kidnapping and execution of babies were all carried out with the purpose of creating a pure race.

As they say, "those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." (various sources) "Cradles of the Reich" reveals a history that we need to be aware of. You can't make this stuff up, and this is definitely not history that we wish to repeat.