Thanks to Debbie Rix, Bookouture, and Netgalley for the chance to read this book in advance of publication in exchange for an honest review. This book will be available to the public on Jan. 13, 2021.

In Germany, at the beginning of Hitler's reign, Annaliese meets a doctor named Hans Vogel who gives her all she could want in life. In order to advance his career, he takes on the role of medical researcher at Dachau - a German labor camp. As an officer in the Third Reich, Hans is expected to have a large family to help the Aryan race and he and Annaliese are having difficulties getting pregnant after many years of marriage. After learning that he is impotent, Hans arranges for Anna to sleep with their gardener, a slave from Dachau and they will pass the child off as their own. What he did not count on was Anna falling in love with the gardener. When the Allies defeat the Germans, Hans escapes Germany and Anna decides to stay behind with her son. Years later, Anna learns the many secrets Hans kept from her and how much she should have known.

This is a well-told and researched Holocaust story from the German perspective. The characters are based on real people with a dose of fictionalization to make them more appealing. I particularly appreciated the author's notes where she explained the truth and the real intrigue behind the story and how it came to be. Debbie Rix took care to develop a story that would keep the reader intrigued from beginning to end. I will be reading some of Rix's backlist and getting to know her better as an author. ( )

A whirlwind pre-war romance filled with love and hope was dashed when Hans became a doctor for the Nazi Party.

Hans was forcibly sent to Dachau to do research and testing on the prisoners. This made him quite unhappy and made Annaliese, his wife, even more unhappy when she found out what he was really doing there.

Annaliese found out what he was doing from her gardener that Hans had brought to their home from the camp.

Annaliese couldn't confront Hans about what she had learned because she knew Hans would take Alexander, the gardener, back to the camp.

It was a tough time for Annaliese, and she was confiding in Alexander even though she knew it was wrong to treat him kindly and give him extra food. She had to tread lightly to not get him in more trouble.

We follow Annaliese before the war, during the war, after the war as her husband was hunted for his participation in the experiments at Dachau, and in America with her son as he asks about his father. He actually didn’t know his father because he was very young when his father disappeared a few days before the war ended.

THE GERMAN WIFE is well done, heartbreaking, based on true characters, and a book that revealed what went on during the time at Dachau Concentration Camp.

Historical fiction fans and women’s fiction fans will want to read this book.

Excellent read. 5/5

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

The.German Wife is a novel that encompasses two time periods. The book opens in the late 1980’s. Anna Vogel sees a picture in the paper of a man she believed was possibly dead. A man she had known well in the 1940’s. A man who helped shape her present. She starts to recall the long suppressed memories and relates them to her grown son, Sascha.
Annaliese having just buried her father is a 17 year old vulnerable woman in late 1930’s. Munich, Germany. She is alone in the world when she meets a young doctor, Hans Vogel. He is everything that Annaliese wants. He is warm, personable and caring. He is also ambitious and represents stability, financial security and a prestigious social position. He sweeps her off her feet. They soon marry and begin life in a house she could imagine only in her dreams. Annaliese soon makes it a home.
Hans dreams of helping humanity. He wishes to do research into a homeopathic cure for malaria. He joins the elite SS believing it will offer the best opportunity to advance his goals. He dreams of a modern lab fully equipped and stocked with animal test subjects. In reality his posting to Dachau,the infamous German concentration camp, offers a much different view. It’s not a dream but a nightmare. Though the lab is modern he finds that the test subjects would be human prisoners.
We see how Hans begins to make compromises in his ethical beliefs, rationalizing that the suffering of a few to benefit the many was acceptable. We see how he changes as he slowly devolves as a human. We see the ever increasing pressures placed on him by the depravity that was the Nazis. It is the strain on their marriage and the changes it brings about in both of them that forms the basis of the story.
It is a nicely written novel. The author has developed complex and compelling characters. They change throughout the novel in mostly appropriate ways. The pace is fast and the danger of their situation feels real. All in all a good and engrossing read that demonstrates how good people can do evil things, through the lies they tell themselves.
The only difficulty I had was with Annaliese. There were times when she was just way too naive. Refusing to believe the danger her actions were bringing to her family despite being told about it. Or maybe she knew but didn’t care if others got hurt. I would have in real life shook her and told her to stop acting like a besotted teenager and grow up! There where real dangers and bigger issues she needed to be dealing with then a broken heart! I had to put the book down a few times because her actions annoyed me so much. For this reason I’m rating the book 3.5 stars and not upgrading to four. I just felt there were better ways for the author to increase the danger and tension then making the main character a simpering idiot!

I received an ARC of this book from the publisher, Bookouture Audio and NetGalley. This fact in no way influenced my review. ( )