Some audio books leave a deep imprint on your heart. They take you to another time and place as you listen to the author's words. Not until "The German Wife" did I fully embrace the impact Hitler's reign had on the people that lived through it. This book is based on unforgettable true events.


Annaliese is only 17-years-old when she first encounters a handsome young doctor named Hans Vogel. Having just buried her dad, Annaliese is vulnerable and feels very alone in the world. She marries Hans in a whirlwind romance. He is an extremely ambitious doctor and is dedicated to his profession. She feel protected and safe in the relationship.


After the marriage, Hans joins the German SS to further his medical career. He is very committed to researching a cure for malaria. He is sent to work at the "Dachau Concentration Camp" where his is pressured to perform horrifying tests on the prisoners. Han's job is to infect the prisioners with malaria, administer hallucinogenic drugs as truth serums, and subject the men, women, and children to freezing temperatures to test their reaction to hypothermia. The camp rules are to bring torture, suffering and death to those imprisoned there. Han's hates his active role in this cruel environment, but is unable to tell anyone of his despair because he fears for his family member's safety. When Annaliese figures out Han's is part of the inhumane acts, she begins to resent him. She feels betrayed. They are both trapped in an unbearable life.


This is only a small snippet of this fascinating heartbreaking novel. If you enjoy historical fiction based on true events, this one will leave you breathless!


Standing ovation to Debbie Fix for writing this eye-opening story! "The German Wife" audio book is narrated by the extraordinary Tamsin Kennard. It will be published January 13, 2022.


Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture Audio for the honor of reviewing this audio. I really appreciate you!

I started this book in ebook form, but was excited when I was approved for the audiobook and could enjoy this book in multiple ways. I liked the narrator and because it was from Annaliese's point of view I could imagine the voice of the narrator as her speaking.

The book starts with Annaliese as an older woman with her adult son confronting her about his father and wanting the truth; immediately after, the book goes back in time and stays there until the very end. Annaliese lived in Germany when a few encounters with a man, Hans will change her life forever.

Annaliese marries Hans who becomes a doctor who works at Dachau. While I do believe he went there thinking that he would be doing good work, it quickly changed and I do believe that he didn't think he could get out of the Nazi hold. After finishing the book, I read a few other reviews just to see other's thoughts and a few said they couldn't believe how naive Annaliese was and I can see that. There has been many accounts that the German people weren't fully aware and in that time where news wasn't on tv twenty-four hours a day, I can believe that Annaliese didn't know what all was happening at her husband's work.

The author did such an amazing job of writing a World War II book where some of the atrocities were included, but it wasn't overwhelming. I knew that there were experiments done on those being held in these camps, but to see them through the eyes of a doctor who had a little bit of a moral compass was interesting to read.

This was my first Debbie Rix book, but will not be my last.

was expecting Debbie Rix's book "The German Wife" to go in a certain direction as many WW2 books do, but this one surprised me by going a unique way. This book is based on true events which makes it more compelling. It started out as okay and then as the story progressed I really could not wait to see what would happen. Starting out in 1939 a sweet but naïve Annaliese meets Hans and though he seems quite taken with her she seems more like he is an answer to moving up and being secure.
The war comes along, her husband joins the SS to better his career and suddenly that is all he can see and his wife is just going through the days--made worse by her critical mother in law who moves in with them. She is mostly critical of Annaliese's inability to get pregnant.
The garden needs work so her husband "saves" a Russian prisoner of war from work in the factories and he begins working at their ample home as a gardener. I realized immediately where this would go at this point.
The love story that follows seems very one sided and had a power imbalance which Annaliese did not seem to notice. I kept thinking things would change for the better after the war as she did, but there really was not a happy tied up in a bow ending.
The book ends with a reunion of sorts and leaves you on a hopeful note anyway.

Annaliese Vogel was happily married to Hans who is a doctor at the beginning of WW2. When he signs up with the SS in order to protect himself and his career their lives are changed forever. Assigned to Dachau to initially work on experiments into disease control to protect German troops. As he is pulled into more sinister experimentation his attitude changes and Annaliese finds they are being pulled apart and their once happy marriage is in trouble. Hans is horrified by what he witnesses and has to do but he feels that if he wants to survive the war himself he has no other choice and has to enlist his wife at times for what he sees as the greater good.
The books prologue introduces us to Annaliese with her new life in America where she is a retired interior decorator. Confronted with a face from her past it brings back the memories she thought lay hidden. From here we are taken back to her life in Germany and see her struggles with what that entails as the war progresses. It is in these chapters we are given a different perspective of the war and what it meant for German families who lived on the periphery of what was happening.
There was a part of me that felt sorry for Annaliese as she did her best to adapt to the constant changes, living with her overbearing mother-in-law and her crumbling marriage. As she fought for normalcy there were times that I wanted her to stop ignoring what was happening and confront her husband. Even when she found out some of the horrors that were being inflicted on prisoners she seemed to bottle it up.
As the relationship grew between Annaliese and the prisoner her husband had managed to get assigned as their gardener, you could see the glimmer of the woman she used to be and her dreams of them making a life together were a way of shutting everything else out as ultimately you knew that their very different experiences in the war should they both survive would keep them apart.
With a mix of historical events and fiction I was certainly intrigued by this book, and I do hope that the fate of Hans after the war was part of the fiction part and that the trade-off he received was not common practice during that time. Even now I am not sure if I feel sympathy for Annaliese or uncomfortable about how she shut out things to preserve her own life but at she is certainly a character that I will remember