Approaching this subject, I was determined not to pre-judge these women or impose my own values on them – within reason – or caricature them as “evil” or “monstrous”. Instead, I wanted to unravel them as human beings and expose their complexities and contradictions. It seemed too simplistic, too easy, to fall back on the archetype Shakespeare created. Yet I couldn’t ignore it entirely as it cast a shadow over what I was attempting to achieve.
As I got deeper into the research, however, it became clear that the fundamental, and very significant difference between the Nazi Wives and the doomed Queen was motivation. Lady Macbeth was driven by pure ambition, an unadulterated craving for power. She had no political, moral, or religious quarrel with her beloved King, and though the Nazi Wives wanted their husbands to succeed, they were also motivated by their commitment to Hitler’s ideology, which was more important to them than mere ambition; their unwavering belief in their Führer sustained them through thick and thin. Aside from Emmy Goering – Hermann’s second wife, a successful actress more interested in fame and fortune than politics – all the wives were dedicated, with varying degrees of intensity, to Nazism and Hitler’s psychotic worldview.
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