Cradles of the Reich follows three very different women who are brought to Heim Hochland Estate in Bavaria. This home is used as part of the German Lebensborn Program where some young pregnant German women were brought during their pregnancy. Other young, unwed “racially pure” women were also brought to these homes where German officers would visit in attempts for them to become pregnant. The babies would then be offered up for adoption to high-ranking German Officers. The Lebensborn Program is one of the Third Reich’s lesser-known programs but equally as horrible as they endeavored to build the perfect Aryan Germany.

I really loved how Jennifer took three very, very different women and shared their very unique experience at Heim Hochland. From the woman working for the resistance, who epitomizes the Aryan look, who is secretly pregnant with a Jewish baby, to the older nurse who is trying to figure out how she feels about what is really going on in this home. And lastly, you have Hilde who is the picture of a perfect Nazi supporter, pregnant with a high-ranking officer’s baby.

This story is well-researched, educational, and such an interesting read! I couldn’t put it down. Also, that ending! My heart was racing for the last 50 pages. I loved how Jennifer added in that element of that high stakes ending that I was not expecting. It’s a shocking and dark tale, as most are from this time in history, but I was educated by a story I couldn’t put down. If this is a genre that speaks to you, be on the lookout for this one to hit shelves next month.

Coburn has crafted an intriguing story taken from the secrets of the Nazis. She weaves together the stories of three very different women that could have been bleak but she manages to actually give the reader hope. It is a long book but you don't realize that while you're reading it. You are swept away in the emotions and danger. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it for a great historically accurate read.

Such a shocking revelation. Had no idea that the Nazis had breeding home for the "benefit" if their soldiers. Unbelievable. Can not believe this has not been public knowledge, but of course the Natzis would want it hushed up.

These poor young women. How horrifying.

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher,and author for granting me a copy in return for my honest opinion

This book seriously needs an epilogue. With all the drama and excitement that literally had me holding my breath, it just suddenly ended and went to the Author's Notes, which are worth reading, by the way.

The whole book is a powerhouse that addresses the darkest part of modern history, the Nazis and the Third Reich, and their efforts to create a master race. Of course, I knew that was one of their major objectives from my time spent in history classes and reading on the subject myself, but until I read this book I had never heard of the Lebensborn Society , which was essentially a bunch of "perfect" young German girls who were breeding "perfect" children for Hitler and the Reich. Some of them were already pregnant by "perfect" German men. Others were bedding down with SS officers, who were strangers. Yes, the Reich was running brothels; breeding operations. I was stunned when I discovered this and I wanted to know more.

The story centers on Gundi, who is pregnant by her Jewish boyfriend and is being cared for at Heim Hochland, a maternity home for unwed mothers who show physical traits of being members of this master race. The nurses there all assume that the father of her child is also Aryan and she's not at liberty to correct them.

The second character is Hilde. How I wanted to slap her for being such a suck-up and thinking she deserved special privileges because of who the father of her baby was. I wanted her to get her comeuppance so bad. Anything bad that happened to her she deserved and then some. I'm not sure I'd actually call her an antagonist, but she was young, foolish, and unlikable. Her conniving, lying, and manipulative ways knew no boundaries. She was the poster child for the Reich. The sad part of it was she just wanted to be loved and accepted. We all do. Right? She just went to extremes to get it and sacrificed too much, which made her a totally believable character.

Then there was Irma. She surprised me more than any of the other characters in the entire book. I wasn't too keen on her at first, but then I saw another side of her that made me step back and rethink her. What a conundrum she was in as the story progressed. She was a nurse at the Heim Hochland and part of her orders were not to get close to the girls. How does one do that?

The story is based on facts. The author definitely did her homework and presented what she'd learned in a way that horrified yet informed me at the same time. I was drawn into the lives of these three women and hoped for the best for Gundi and Irma. I didn't care what happened to Hilde, since I didn't like her, but it would've been nice to know what happened to all of them one year, two years, three years, or even after the war. I wanted to know what happened to Leo and Sister Dorothea. I wanted to know more about Renate and Gisela and even Hannah. We were left hanging with no sort of wrap up, which is why I'm giving this book four stars.

It was wonderfully written and tackled a subject that is dark, grisly, inhumane, and not known to everyone. But it needed an epilogue. Still a great read.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

‘Cradles of the Reich’, was my first Jennifer Coburn book. The story follows three women in Germany during the 1930’s and their experiences with the Lebensborn Society, a maternity home and breeding facility to help ensure racially fit children are part of the New Germany. This historical fictional novel, shows us the lengths that were taken to try and facilitate a “superior race”. Ms. Coburn has done an excellent job of researching this dark period in history.

I read a lot of WWII fiction and it always amazes me that there are still parts of the war that have never been written about in popular fiction. Jennifer Coburn did extensive research of Nazi state supported homes where unwed mothers who were deemed to be perfectly Aryans could be pampered until they had their children and then the home arranged for the children to be adopted mostly by SS members. Many women volunteered for the 'breeding program' to do their part for Germany in the war. She tells this unique story using three women who were at the home at the same time but had totally different backgrounds and views of the Nazis. Two of the women are patients at Heim Hochland, a real Nazi breeding home in Bavaria, where they are awaiting the birth of their children and one of the women is a nurse working at the maternity home.

Gundi is a pregnant university student from Berlin. She is beautiful and deemed a pure Aryan but the authorities don't know that she is a member of a resistance group. She is also hiding a big secret about the father of her baby and knows that when the truth comes out, it will likely cause her death and the death of the baby.

Hilde, only eighteen, is a true believer in the Nazi regime and knows that if she gets pregnant with the child of a Nazi official, her life will be wonderful. She is assertive and difficult and feels like she is superior to the rest of the women at the maternity home.

Irma, a 44-year-old nurse, is desperate to build a new life for herself after she breaks up with the love of her life. She had worked as a nurse in WWI and saw so much death that she was excited to work in a maternity home and see beautiful births.

This well researched book about a little known subject gives the readers a look at a very dark time in WWII history. Women were only appreciated for their ability to have babies and women who had four babies were given The Cross of Honour of the German Mother.

This is a book about hatred and the need to breed perfect children but the underlying theme is that there is always a light of good - no matter how small - even in the darkest times.

If you enjoy WWII fiction, you don't want to miss Cradles of the Reich.

Fantastic book - well researched but not an overload of detail, and a fascinating story. I would highly recommend this book!

Cradles of the Reich follows three women living in Nazi Germany whose lives intersect at one of the Nazi Lebensborn facilities. Each protagonist captures a different attitude towards the Nazi party at the beginning of the story: Gundi is part of a resistance group inside Germany; Irma is ambivalent about the Nazis’ anti-Sematic rhetoric; and finally Hilde, who wants nothing more than power and attention, and believes in everything the party says. Gundi and Hildeare both unwed expectant mothers, sent to the Lebensborn facility to carry their children who will then be adopted by high status families.

Irma's initial indifference is hard to read through. Hindsight may be 20/20, but her lack of concern or understanding is highly off-putting. Where Irma's character experiences growth, Hilde is despicable from beginning to end. Her complete naivete when it comes to her short-lived position as an officer's mistress is perhaps the most likeable feature about her, and I found it to be incredibly annoying. The chapters where Hilde was narrating limited my enjoyment of the novel, and my willingness to engage with it. The other story lines were solid, and I would have enjoyed the book more had they been the only voices. Women like Irma did exist, and we shouldn't forget how simple it may seem to just go along with evil. But, for me at least, giving Hilde a leading role was a mistake. If you don't need your narrators to be good (or just decent) people, you may have better luck than I did.

Overall, a good novel, but not for me.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher for an honest review.

This is an engrossing story about three women in German on the cusp of World War II who are part of little known piece of Nazi history - the Lebensborn Society. The three women are Irma, a 40-something nurse who lived through the horrors of the Great War; Hilde, a teenager who is mistress to a high ranking Nazi officer and is excited to fulfill her duty to her country and the Nazi party by bearing his child; and Gundi, a 20 year old university student that fits the Nazi party's definition of a perfect Aryan beauty, is pregnant with her Jewish boyfriend's child and secretly working with the resistance. These three women come together at a maternity home in Bavaria to bring forth the next generation of Aryan children for the new Germany under the Third Reich.

This story kept my attention and I loved the different perspectives of the three women and how their stories interact and become entwined. I love that the author, in her notes at the end, cites that she got this idea from watching the tv show, Man in the High Castle, which I have watched and also sparked my interested in the history of the Lebensborn Society

My only critique is that I would have liked one of the main characters to be one of the apprentice mothers - young unmarried women who volunteered to have sex with SS officers to have, by their definition, racially pure children "for the Fuhrer" that would adopted by high-ranking Nazi families.

Thank you to NetGalley, Jennifer Coburn, and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing me an advanced reading copy in exchange for my honest review.

Cradles of the Reich by Jennifer Coburn takes the reader to a dark part of Nazi Germany at the Lebensborn Society maternity homes. I became familiar with these homes when I read Sara Young’s My Enemy’s Cradle many moons ago. Both books did a stellar job of bringing these homes to life, yet the circumstances are entirely different.

Coburn uses three characters’ experiences to show the how and why they came to be in a maternity home for Aryan bred children. Hilde wanted to be a high-ranking German wife, Gundi was sent there as the perfect German woman, but she hides a looming secret, and Irma is there as a nurse until she learns the awful truth about the home. I liked that the characters met one another but sometimes I was yearning for a first person POV.

Watching the newest season of The Handmaid’s Tale made think of the similarities between the sci-fi birthing rooms/homes and what happened in WW2 at these homes. When the high-level commanders came to the homes to hopefully impregnate some of the girls, I was sickened. It was painful to read at some points, but equally important because we can learn from these atrocities in order to stop them from happening again.

I think book clubs will have a lot to discuss while fleshing out the characters, their motives and how each character fared by the end.

3.5 stars, rounded up. A chilling novel that reads more like horror than the historical fiction it is. This story focuses on three women involved in the Nazi's Aryan supremacy breeding program, The Lebensborn Society. The Society provided maternity homes for racially desirable pregnant young women, groomed other young women as sexual partners for officers of the Reich, and kidnapped Aryan babies and children from other countries for adoption schemes. Gundi, a young woman active in the Resistance and pregnant with her Jewish lover's baby, is sent to a maternity home. The other two women in this novel are less likable and sympathetic. Hilde, pregnant by a high-ranking married SS officer, is slavishly devoted to the Reich and engages in horrendous behavior over and over. And finally, Nurse Irma, who is caring for the young mothers-to-be, is somewhat rehabilitated throughout the novel but it felt like too little, too late for my liking. Overall the history is fascinating (in a gruesome way), and it's clear Coburn did a great job researching. The writing is a little rough and the characters didn't really come to life for me, but I still think it's a book worth reading. Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for a digital review copy.

Three women, strangers to each other find themselves in Heim Hochland, a Nazi breeding home in this interesting fact based novel. I found the book to have a very slow beginning but did pick up the pace. The characters were believable and the story heartbreaking because events like portrayed happened. The naive girls led to become birthing vessels for the Reich was astonishing. It's hard to believe people were so cruel to others. I encourage readers to not miss the author's note.

This well-researched dive into the human breeding program of the Third Reich may well give you nightmares that a supernatural thriller can't match. The horrors of the Nazi regime extended to motherhood: young women trafficked and impregnated to produce "Aryan" babies for adoption by highly placed members of German society; sufficiently light-skinned babies torn from their parents, who were then sent to the work camps or perhaps summarily executed; said babies who didn't match the desired ethnic profile tossed onto the garbage heap. Coburn competently delivers this horrifying tale through the eyes of three German women: a young adult who has her eyes opened to the reality of fascist brutality and joins the resistance; another who closes her eyes to that brutality and becomes a cheerleader for the Reich; and a third, a nurse who initially thinks that if so many people are following along, it must be OK--until it's not. The afterword from the author makes clear that Coburn has carried out meticulous research, only altering minor details. The true extent of the Nazi Lebensborn program will never be known, as records were destroyed while the regime was collapsing. But Coburn has thankfully brought these atrocities to light in a compelling narrative. A must read for fans of historical fiction and those interested in social injustice, as well as resistance in the shadow of tyranny. Recommended for all libraries. Thanks to Sourcebooks for providing the ARC for my review.

I appreciate NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the opportunity to read and review Cradles of the Reich. I've read a lot of books set during World War II, but so few are written from the German point of view. Hilde, Irma and Gundi all find themselves at the Heim Hochland, a home for unwed mothers ensuring that their Aryan babies are adopted by good German families to enhance the new Germany. Neither the home, nor the three ladies who find themselves there are what they seem. I really enjoyed the book and went on to learn more about these types of homes that did in fact exist.

Set in Nazi Germany, Cradles of the Reich explores a neglected part of German history, the Lebensborn programme, where young women were encouraged to increase the number of racially pure children based on Nazi eugenics. I came across the Lebensborn programme while studying history at university and when I saw the premise of Cradles of the Reich, I knew that this was be an intriguing and equally disturbing story.

Told from the perspective of three women, their stories are woven together beautifully by the author. Irma, a former nurse, who has suffered great losses in the past; Hilde, a fanatical young woman determined to forge a path for herself amongst the key players in the Nazi political world, carrying the child of a Nazi officer, and Gundi, a young woman who is pregnant by her Jewish boyfriend, a member of a resistance group and terrified that the Nazis will find out about her unborn child’s father.

Beautifully written and expertly researched, Coburn brings this aspect of Nazi Germany to life on the page. The setting of Heim Hochland in a beautiful estate in Bavaria full of all the trappings of wealth and status contrasts superbly against the sordid and terrifying truth hidden behind its doors. The focus on three women and their individual experiences of the home is riveting and I couldn’t put the book down. I feel that this story could be continued in a second book as I became really invested in each of the characters’ stories.

A truly terrifying aspect of Hitler’s warped ideology, Coburn has shed new light onto this aspect of World War Two history and brought the human aspect of it to the fore with her focus on three ordinary women caught up in the storm of propaganda, lies and manipulation broadcast by the Nazis at this time.

Fans of Kate Quinn’s historical fiction set in World War Two will thoroughly enjoy Cradles of the Reich. Thanks to NetGalley and publishers for the arc. Cradles of the Reich will be out on the 11th of October.

This review will be published on my blog and Instagram page in early October.

Three German women find themselves at Heim Hochland maternity home, part of the Lebensborn Society during World War II. This home is part of the program to breed "racially fit' babies and raise them in upstanding German homes. Hilde, Irma and Gundi's lives intertwine here.

I give this 3.5 stars as I wished it was a little bit longer and could have expanded more on the lives of the women before and after their stay. The trauma all the women in this story endured was horrific, and that was very well told.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for providing me with an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Available October 11, 2022.

I was very happy to read Cradles of the Reich. I had been waiting on this book for a year! The subject matter is difficult so I can't really say that I enjoyed the book although, I sure learned a lot. I had no idea that there was a "breeding" program within the Nazi party. I don't know why I was surprised by that. In this book, which is a work of fiction but based on real life events, we meet 3 women who are affected by the unwed mothers' home, Heim Hochland. I didn't get to know these characters enough and would love to learn more about their lives.

ℂ𝕣𝕒𝕕𝕝𝕖𝕤 𝕆𝕗 ℝ𝕖𝕚𝕔𝕙 ℝ𝕖𝕧𝕚𝕖𝕨 ✨

𝐏𝐮𝐛 𝐃𝐚𝐭𝐞: OCTOBER 11th
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫: @jennifercoburnbooks
𝐆𝐞𝐧𝐫𝐞: Historical Fiction

𝑻𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕𝒔 💭:
This is such a beautiful story on a piece of history I know very little about. The author did a great job researching a topic that has very little information recorded.

This story is told through 3 different POV, Gundi - whom is pregnant and who the Regime thinks is carrying 🤰🏼 a “superior” blood line to the regime. Irma - a nurse, who works at a home that is part of the Lebensborn program (a place that houses the women who are to give birth to racially fit babies). AND Hilda - who wants to be part of the superior race and give birth to a German “superior” baby.

Even though the three women come from very different backgrounds and circumstances, they all end up in the same home and their stories begin to intertwine and unfold.

If you like historical fiction, and reading about a part of WWII that there is little information on, I highly recommend.

Cradles of Reich is a shocking and sad look back at history.

𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗩𝗲𝗿𝗱𝗶𝗰𝘁: 𝗧𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗼𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗛𝗮𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 ✨

I have read a ton of World War 2 books and this is definitely one of the best! This book is based on true events which I enjoyed learning about as I had never heard of these events. The story is told by 3 women. Hilde is eighteen-years-old and is happy to carry a Nazi child, Gundi is a pregnant university student and a member of the resistance, and Irma is a nurse trying to build a new life. This book told another horror committed by the Nazis taking babies from their families to be raised for the New Germany. This story was heartbreaking at times and hard to read but I read the book quickly as I couldn't put it down. I received and advanced readers copy and all opinions are my own.

I have read many historical fiction books about WWII and you would think I wouldn't be surprised, but I was proven wrong! The characters were well developed and the subject matter was dark.. Breeding homes for "racially pure" babies put in place by the Nazis.; such a dark time in history that should not be forgotten. Thank you Jennifer Coburn for your research and fine writing skills.