Reddit mentions of Frauen: German Women Recall the Third Reich

I applaud the publishing of this book and it sounds very interesting, but the title of the article (and by extension this post, though that's not the fault of the OP) is a bit misleading. I would say that at this point the consensus of historians on the subject is at best that the German populace was willfully ignorant of the atrocities committed against the Jews. If you read firsthand accounts of Germans living during the Holocaust and look at the simple logistics of the situation, it would have been impossible for them NOT to have any idea of what was happening to the Jews and others.

There was a significant amount of anti-semitism amongst the Germans during that time period. Look at accounts such as Frauen (http://www.amazon.com/Frauen-German-Women-Recall-Third/dp/0813522005/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318681094&sr=8-1). Maybe it was not their primary reason for supporting the Nazi party, but a lot of Germans (I would dare say even a majority) were onboard with the Nazis' anti-Semitic agenda. Europe, and especially Germany, has a long and ignominious history of anti-Jewish sentiment and action.

Furthermore, the oppression of the Jews was ubiquitous and blatant. There were concentration camps all over Germany, and they were not subtle affairs. Additionally consider the large numbers of Jews and POWs being used as forced labor in German industry, oftentimes alongside Germans. Not to mention that the recovery of the German economy was not due to some economic genius possessed by Hitler or his advisors but founded on extracting the wealth of the Jewish population. Though that's really tangential.

tl;dr The historical consensus is that if Germans didn't at least have an idea about the Holocaust when it was going on, it was only because they did not want to know.

Also Frauen: Women of the Third Reich touches on some attitudes of women in Nazi Germany, and has a few insights into what drove these harridans (I helped transcribe and translate interviews for it, that was pretty amazing, listening to people who were there try to explain and justify their actions).

IIRC, there was at least one woman interviewed for that book who was a camp guard of some sorts.